The New England Quarterly 1935-06: Vol 8 Iss 2

THE)
NEW ENGLAND
QVARTERLY

Registered in the United States Patent Office

An Historical Review of
New England Life and Letters

Volume VIII Number 2 .
June, 1935

CONTENTS

Tue Dynamic INTERPRETATION OF History Roy F. Nichols
THe NANTUCKET WHALE FisHERY Gerald S. Graham
SANTAYANA’S Dest TO New EncLanp Donald MacCampbell
Tue SourH AND NoRTHERN RADICALISM Clement Eaton
EVOLUTION IN NEw ENGLAND B. J. Loewenberg

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS

The Cardinal's Recollections Francis A. Christie
Thoreau’s Opinion of Whitman Viola C. White
New England Almanacs N. W. Lovely
Henry Marchant’s Library Susan S. Brayton
Boox REvIEws
GrocraPHy AND GreoLocy or ... Cape Cop...,
by J. B. Woodworth and Edward Wigglesworth H. C. Kittredge
Samuet Graiptey Howe, by Laura E. Richards H. S. Commager
AMERICAN Pays, by Allan Gates Halline W. E. Sedgwick
AMERICANS IN ENGLAND, by R. B. Mowat R. E. Spiller
America’s Tracepy, by James Truslow Adams Elizabeth Foster

Tue Letrers oF GAMALIEL BRaprorD, 1918-1931,
Edited by Van Wyck Brooks E. S. Noyes

Tuvor GrocraPHy, 1485-1583; and Late Tupor AND
Earty Sruart Geocrapuy, 1583-1650, by E. G. R.
Taylor; and THe ExpLorers oF NortTH AMERICA, 1492-

1806, by John Bartlet Brebner Fulmer Mood
CANADA AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION,

by George M. Wrong T. H. Le Duc
Essays OF WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER,

Edited by A. G. Keller and Maurice R. Davie P. A. Sorokin
Fourscore: An AuTosiocraPHy, by Robert Grant Stewart Mitchell

Nores on CONTRIBUTORS

179

203

215

232

258

264
277

284

287
288

THE
NEW ENGLAND
QVARTERLY

JUNE, 1935

THE DYNAMIC INTERPRETATION OF
HISTORY ;

ROY F. NICHOLS?

I

N the fullness of time, 1894 to be exact, Henry Adams be-

came president of the American Historical Association.
The chief function of such an executive is to deliver an ad-
dress at the Christmas gathering of historians, but in this
particular year Adams was in Mexico. Therefore he com-
municated with his colleagues by a letter designed to provoke
discussion of a question which he held vital, namely, the ulti-
mate character and purpose of history. His state of mind is
revealed in a letter which he wrote scmewhat later.

In the chaotic and unintelligible condition in which I found —
and left — the field of knowledge which is called History, I be-
came over-poweringly conscious that any further pretence on my

1 The author of this paper is particularly under obligation to a number
of scientists at Princeton University and at the University of Pennsylvania
who discussed these matters with him at great length. They contributed
greatly to his knowledge but they can not in any way be held accountable for
the judgments of a layman.

This paper was read at a meeting of the American Historical Association,
at Washington, in December, 1934.

163

164 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

part of acting as instructor would be something worse than hum-
bug, unless I could clear my mind in regard to what I wanted to
teach. As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end
and without lesson.”

As he told the association in his presidential letter, he thought
history should be a science, a science which should be abso-
lute and which should fix with mathematical certainty the
path which human society must follow. The historian should
seek the force, or forces, which actuate human society, map
them out and thus discover their direction. This, he thought,
could be done, and history be made, thereby, a centre of in-
tellectual attention rather than remain only a tolerated play-
thing. Because the direction of motion which history might
discover would conflict, probably, with the interest of one or
more great institutions, historians would find themselves sub-
jected to pressure and professional martyrdom in order to force
them to falsify the verdict. Adams was rather vague about the
whole thing: he hinted at crises and left the impression that
history ought to be an exact science but, that if it became so,
it would be dangerous for the historians themselves.*

In the years following this letter, Adams went on with his
search for the great generalization. A yearning for the dis-
covery of the ultimate force in the affairs of men long had
been a stimulus to thought among the philosophical. Super-
natural, or at best metaphysical, forces were those heretofore
usually discovered. Fate, the gods, divine Providence, God,
the Trinity, the Virgin, and the company of the saints were
some of the supernatural forces in which was found the source
of human action. Metaphysicians, especially those of the nine-
teenth century, and notably Hegel, spoke and wrote of the
universal spirit, the spirit of the age, the destiny of the race,
the soul of a nation. Buckle, Comte, and Lamprecht had made

2 Henry Adams to Dr. J. Franklin Jameson, Washington, November 17,
1896. The author is indebted to Dr. Jameson for showing him this letter and
giving him permission to use it.

8 This letter, dated December 12, 1894, is reprinted in Henry Adams, The
Degradation of the Democratic Dogma (New York, 1919) , 125-133.

—

HENRY ADAMS ON HISTORY 165

much of scientific history and had written of the laws of
society — in fact, they but echoed the eighteenth century in
their confidence that reason would find the laws of all activity,
both cosmic and human. Henry Adams himself was more in-
fluenced, perhaps, by Darwin and Lyell but like the rest
sought for the formula which would bring all history under a
law as clear as the laws of physics seemed still to be in the latter
part of the nineteenth century.

The story of his quest, as he tells it in his autobiography *
is both amusing and fascinating. The key to the whole prob-
lem, he felt, was the relation of force to thought; therefore he
must seek a dynamic interpretation. According to his descrip-
tion, the search for such an interpretation started on its final
stage in 1893 and came to an end in 1910. During these years
he made all sorts and kinds of experiments and formulated
theories relating to various types of dynamics such as steam
power, electricity and the dynamo, faith, women (abstractly,
as a force), geology, relations of races, psychology, physics,
and finally, radium. And what did he find? Unity, seemingly,
had given place to complexity: a complexity of force exist-
ing without direction. Amidst this chaos how could he meas-
ure thought-motion and determine its direction?

More and more as he explored did it appear that there were
two conflicting dynamic theories which attempted to describe
the direction of thought. The first of these was a law of evo-
lution, or indefinite progress; the other a law of entropy, or
ultimate degradation. Which was dominant? So impressed
was he by the importance of the solution of this problem that
he decided once more to come before the American Historical
Association, again by letter, for he was a very shy man. Con-
sequently, in the spring of 1910, some of the members of
the association found in the mail a small book, signed by
Henry Adams and entitled A Letter to American Teachers of
History.®

4 The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography (Boston, 1918) .

5 This letter bore the date of February 16, 1910, and can be found most
conveniently in The Degradation of-the Democratic Dogma, 137-263.

166 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

In this letter he gave an elaborate demonstration which had
brought him to an inevitable and somewhat startling conclu-
sion. He was certain that the hypothesis of evolution not only
had failed to be demonstrated but, on the contrary, had been
overthrown by a discovery in physics. This was the second law
of thermodynamics which, stated in Thomson’s phrase, de-
clared that “ There is a universal tendency to the dissipation

of mechanical energy: . . . any restoration of mechanical
energy . . . is impossible; . . . within a finite period of
time . . . the earth must . . . be unfit for the habitation of

man.” * Such a law destroyed the possibility of indefinite evo-
lution; thermodynamics had terribly narrowed the universe.
“ Already,” he told the teachers, “ History and Sociology gasp
for breath.” * He therefore sought to awaken his colleagues to
the impending doom and urged them to unite with the biolo-
gist, the sociologist, and the psychologist in working out some
common formula which would prepare society for its fate and
as he phrased it “ serve their students as a working model for
their study of the vital energies.” * This formula, he said,
must be brought into accord with those of the physicists. It
was absurd for social science to teach progress while physical
science was committed to destruction. As far as can be dis-
covered few of those who received this letter sought to join
Adams in the search for the dynamic principle. As one who
knew him said, “ His appeal was quite premature.”

As a matter of fact, Adams had made a tentative formula-
tion of his principle but he did not reveal it to the public.
It was not until his autobiography had appeared in 1918, and
his brother, Brooks Adams, had published The Degradation
of the Democratic Dogma the following year, that it was pos-
sible to learn what this was. It will be found in two chapters
of the Autobiography and an essay in the Degradation as “ A
Dynamic Theory of History,” “ A Law of Acceleration,” and

© The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma, 141.
7 The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma, 261.
8 The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma, 262.

HENRY ADAMS ON HISTORY 167

“The Rule of Phase Applied to History.” Yet even here the
dynamic interpretation of history is not very precisely formu-
lated. Adams's studies of force led him to believe that thought
followed its developments. The order of the appearance of the
great forces conveniently corresponded to the order of their
intensity. First, there was human reproductive energy as
represented by women; second, faith, culminating in Chris-
tianity; third, mechanical power; fourth, electricity; and fi-
nally, radium. Each of these he considered more intense and
more potent than the preceding, and each gave greater ac-
celeration to thought. Each one he believed to be developed
at a greater expense of energy than the preceding. Therefore
he took two laws, Willard Gibbs’s phase rule and the second
law of thermodynamics, from which the phase rule is deduced,
and with these he made his formula. ,
Applying the phase rule, he discovered thought to be a
homogenous mixture which passes through various equilibria
just as water can be solid, liquid, or gas: ice, water, or vapor.
Just as each chemical phase began and ended under some
change of temperature or pressure, so thought changed its
phase under some new or unusual force. Adams sought to prove
that as thought was being accelerated, the succeeding phases
were decreasing in length, by the law of inverse squares. The
phase of thought in which faith had predominated, the re-
ligious phase, had lasted ninety thousand years and ended
about 1600, when Copernicus and Galileo introduced the
idea of mechanical causation. Then began the mechanical
phase, which was three hundred years in length — the square
root of ninety thousand. The third, or electrical, phase could
last, by the same rule, but seventeen and a fraction years, i.e.
VV 300: from 1900 to 1917. His logical conclusion was a pre-
diction that the final phase of thought would be brief, 17.5,
or little more than four years; this would be the phase of pure
thought, the ethereal phase, i.e. thought in terms of itself. By
1921, therefore, we should reach the limits of man’s mental
capacity. As each new phase, or equilibrium, had been ob-

168 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

tained by a greater expenditure of energy, the natural results
of the application of the second law of thermodynamics meant
that entropy was growing with increasing speed, and that the
final limit of thought and the final dissipation of energy were
distressingly near. It was all to be summed up in an inevitable
law of degradation. Such was Henry Adams’s dynamic inter-
pretation of history. On an anxious day in March, 1918, when
the great German offensive seemed about to carry Adams's
theory to a perfect climax, he died.

Before discussing the validity of this theory, it is well to
consider for a moment the personality of its author and the
intellectual atmosphere of the day. Henry Adams had one
very good reason, if not more, why the law of entropy should
be instinctively attractive to him. He came of a distinguished
family; his grandfather and great-grandfather had been presi-
dents of the United States; his father had been a distinguished
minister to Great Britain. He, in the fourth generation, was
never to have the satisfaction of receiving even an invitation
to a minor post. Here was a dissipation of energy. Besides it
was a pessimistic period in thought; many other minds, some
of them scientific, had been gripped by what were then con-
sidered the valid philosophical implications of the second law
of thermodynamics, and a moan of despair rose from certain
classes of European intellectuals. The physicists felt particu-
larly puzzled because radium had just recently been discov-
ered, and its peculiarities seemed to upset the whole much-
vaunted scheme of classical physics. Adams was, perhaps, a
helpless child of circumstance rather than a wilful pessimist.

II

To-day the atmosphere of scientific thought is entirely dif-
ferent. Since Henry Adams’s day a veritable revolution in
science has occurred. Planck, Einstein, Rutherford, Bohr, and
others have been at work with amazing results. Since the close
of the nineteenth century tendencies then already at work

. HENRY ADAMS ON HISTORY 169

have developed with unexpected consequences. In the brief
space of forty years, the scientists’ view of the universe has been
transformed. The theory of relativity, the phenomena of
radioactivity, and quantum mechanics have come to the
fore.°

In the first place, the scientists’ notion of law is now not a
matter of universal acceptance but rather of widespread de-
bate. The intensive studies of atomic structure which have
culminated in the wave and quantum mechanics and the re-
lated data concerning electrons, protons, neutrons, photons,
and positrons have produced a series of attacks on the whole
idea of determinism at its very roots, namely, in the processes
of atomic physics. The units are not acting according to fixed
laws but seem to exercise free will. Consequently there has
been evolved a theory of indeterminism, the chief instance of
which is the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty, which holds
that laws are nothing more than statistics of probability. Such
a conception of law is still in process of formulation, and its
significance is a matter of much debate.

In the second place, the structure and behavior of the uni-
verse are being constantly demonstrated to be less anthropo-
morphic, less understandable in terms of human experience.
That is, men are turning from a visible to a non-visible uni-
verse in which human imagination based upon sense impres-
sion is no longer a possible guide to understanding. The
universe is not built on the old principles of time and space,
matter and motion, to be discovered by observation. Einstein
has demonstrated the immaterial character of matter, and by
his proof of the equivalence of mass and energy has developed

® Titles of books which attempt to explain these changes in terms of the
popular understanding are legion. The following have been selected at ran-
dom: Albert Einstein, Relativity (New York, 1920); Max Planck, Eight Lec-
tures on Theoretical Physics (New ¥ork, 1915); Max Planck, The Universe
in the Light of Modern Physics (New York, 1931); Leopold Infeld, The
World in Modern Science (London, 1934); Science for a New World, J. G.
Crowther, Editor, (New York, 1934) ; James G. Crowther, Progress of Science
(London, 1934); F. S. C. Northrop, Science and First Principles (New York,
1931) ; W. F. G. Swann, Architecture of the Universe (New York, 1934) ; Niels
Bohr, Atomtheorie und Naturbeschreibung (Berlin, 1931) .

170 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

a concept which is certainly non-visible and which can be ex-
pressed only in mathematics.

Another aspect of the theory of relativity has been its em-
phasis upon non-Euclidian geometry. Space is curved, abso-
lute measurements are impossible because of the different
velocities of the various bodies in space, and according to the
principle of uncertainty, position and velocity can never be
determined simultaneously with equal accuracy. The more
accurately we determine the velocity, the less accurate is our
knowledge of position. A corresponding law holds for the
simultaneous determination of time and energy. All this
breaks down the old conception of an observable universe of
visible proportions and brings us to the point where scientists
declare that only through the symbols and calculations of
mathematics can we know anything of the microcosmos and
macrocosmos. If we attempt to formulate physical concepts in
non-mathematical and anthropomorphic terms, we destroy
their purity. In other words, reason has gone beyond imagina-
tion. Mathematical symbols, or Henry Adams's ethereal or
final phase of thought, are the intellectual dominants.

In the third place, knowledge of the character, amount, and
behavior of energy in the universe has been greatly altered.
Radioactivity, which startled Adams and the scientists at the
dawn of the twentieth century, has been a fruitful field of
exploration and has set man on a new quest: the liberation of
energy in the atom. Einstein has discovered that mass can be
transformed into energy, and vice versa. It has also been found
that light elements, when bombarded with particles given off
from radioactive substances or accelerated artificially with
great power, are transformed into other elements. In this way
energy stored up in the atom can be transformed into useful
kinetic energy. To date, the efficiency of this process is ex-
tremely limited, the machines which have to be built to pro-
duce the required force for the bombardment are so gigantic
and the amount of energy released so small that as yet it is not
of much practical value. But if, as Sir James Jeans says, it be-

HENRY ADAMS ON HISTORY 171

comes possible to transform the atoms of our earth into
power, “ mankind will be able to obtain practically unlimited
power with almost no effort.” *

At the same time that the possibilities of a much greater
fund of energy are being developed, science has gained a
much clearer concept of the limits of the second law of
thermodynamics, which disturbed Adams and the physicists
of his day. As Planck describes it, some scientists attempted
to formulate it so that it should “ determine quite generally
the direction of every process occurring in nature.” In
reality, the law of entropy applies only to a closed system of
force, where no introduction of new energy is possible. As one
philosopher describes it, there is a tendency in the universe
to overcome entropy, the running down of the second law is
balanced by a corresponding running up; the law is but one
aspect of a two-fold system. Then there are the mysterious
cosmic rays, which seem to bring energy into the solar system,
leading Millikan to believe that there is a process of re-charg-
ing going on. Furthermore, the universe should have reached
a state of maximum entropy ere this.’* Yet it still goes on, and
some scientists believe that in the extraordinarily high tem-
peratures of the centres of stars like the sun there is a trans-
mutation of matter which continually produces additional
energy. Some astronomers hold that the universe is in a state
of alternate expansion and contraction. Finally, in spite of
the second law, the probable life of the earth has now been
calculated to be at least ten-fold what it was held to be at the
time of Henry Adams. We now have perhaps a billion years
allotted to us within which to worry about entropy. In reality,
we can not begin seriously to calculate the rate of destruction
until we know the sum-total of the energy to be destroyed.
From that knowledge we seem to be very far away. The sec-
ond law of thermodynamics has lost its terror.

"40 Sir James Jeans, Living Philosophies (New York, 1931) , 115.

11 Planck, Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics, 11.

12 Leonard B. Loeb and Arthur S. Adams, Development of Physical
Thought (New York, 1933) , 242.

172 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Physics and history, in fact, are concerned with questions
which are so far removed from each other in fundamentals
as not to be reduceable to the same language. Even the term
“ dynamic” does not mean what we commonly mean — to
the physicist it is not a force or power: it is merely a change
of motion. Scientists object to having read into science pur-
poses dictated by man’s desires, and not warranted by the
formulae. History deals with human conduct, the behavior of
one species of organic matter, the human organism; physics is
concerned with inorganic systems, the very elements of the uni-
verse. Man, the subject of history, inhabits one small speck in
a vast myriad of systems; physics sweeps through space, dealing
with quantities so small and so large as to be quite remote
from anything in the experience of man—except to those
few gifted with mathematical perception. History deals with
the events of human behavior for six thousand years, physics
with cosmic cycles—with thousands of millions of years.
Forces which operate in such inconceivably long periods of
time (even were it to ultimate destruction) could have but
little effect upon man’s history in any length of time open to
the consideration of the historian.

Then what of Adams’s theory? Force undoubtedly affects
thought, and forces have been predominant generally in the
sequence of Adams’s phases, but that there is a definite cal-
culable connection, such as is expressed in the phase rule of
chemistry, or that there is an increase of entropy pointing to
the end of thought or the destruction of the human species
in any definite epoch is not now to be believed. Instead of loss
of energy the thought of the last thirty years shows such vigor
as to render possible a high degree of optimism. The synthetic
power of Einstein and his associates has changed our horizon.

Ill

If we can obtain little aid and comfort from the physicists
in our quest for a fundamental theory, must we give up the

HENRY ADAMS ON HISTORY 173

search, must we turn our backs upon the scientist and seek
refuge in metaphysics? This is what some of our foremost his-
torical thinkers have done. Yet there is much still to be ob-
tained from science. It may be postulated for the purposes of
this discussion that there are two types of forces: the great
forces of the inorganic world with which we have been deal-
ing, and a series of forces much more vital from our point of
view — namely, the forces that dominate the organic realm,
the environment of the human organism. Learning little from
the physicist, we may yet gain much from the biologist and
psychologist. It may yet be possible to construct a new dy-
namic theory which will be neither a law of progress nor a law
of degradation.

The chief focus of history is the behavior of man. Certain
types of human activity, such as the development of institu-
tions and ideas, have been extensively studied and described,
but this specialization has formalized historical treatment of
man to such a degree that the real scope of his activities and
their explanation have been neglected; instead, flocks of ro-
mantic ideas have flown about, quite fantastic to a true scien-
tist. The treatment of human behavior by historians is gen-
erally superficial and often misleading simply because of the
prevailing ignorance of human dynamics. The dissipation of
this ignorance entails fellowship not with the mathematical
physicists who impressed Henry Adams but with scholars in
the biological sciences.

In biology and psychology there have been many advances
in recent years. Several new ventures have arisen, such as
cytology, biophysics and biochemistry, which are seeking to
probe deeper into the structure of the organism and its be-
havior. The centre of attention of the first group has been the
cell, an absorbing object, for within it seems to dwell the
secret of life and growth and decay. Intensive study of the in-
fluences which seem to condition the evolution of a continu-
ously more complicated structure points the way to hopes yet
unrealized. If these scientists can find either the secret of

174 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

growth or even methods of affecting and directing it, who can
foretell the consequences? What a prospect for the protago-
nists of planned economy? To be able to make blue-prints for
cell alteration in mankind, for the regulation of sex, for the
making to order of genius! Fantastic these statements may
seem, but who knows? If these dreams should be realized even
to a small degree, how would history then be written? The
historian would do well to watch the cytologist.

Next to the cell in importance comes the central nervous
system. This has long been a focus for the attention of both
biologist and psychologist. Great advances have been made
recently in technique. The principles and methods of the
study of dynamics in physics are being applied to biology, and
we have departments of biophysics which have deeply im-
pressed progressive scientific thinkers and patrons.** The heat
and the nerve impulses of the body are being studied as the
physicist studies thermodynamics and electrodynamics. The
biophysicists find that nerve impulses are electro-chemical and
can be measured, photographed, and counted. The activity of
the brain can be recorded and its electrical energy can be
transformed into light. Evidently every one of us is a dynamo,
which produces a measurable electrical current. The body,
moreover, produces heat in measurable quantities; it causes
an expense of heat merely to keep a muscle in an organized
condition capable of activity. Evidently there is direct con-
nection between bodily energy and the forces of the inorganic
world.

In a recent article, the physicist Bohr questions whether
there is any profound difference between the behavior of sense
impression in the nerves and an electric current in a metal
wire."* If physical measurement of bodily force can be de-
veloped, one may yet be able to express human behavior in

18 Some suggestions of the interests of biophysicists are found in A. V. Hill,
Adventures in Biophysics (Philadelphia, 1931) ; E. D. Adrian, The Mechanism
of Nervous Action (Philadelphia, 1932); D. W. Bronk, “ Nerve Messages ”:
Scientific Monthly, xxxvu, 546-549.

14 Bohr, Atomtheorie und Naturbeschreibung, 72.

HENRY ADAMS ON HISTORY 175

terms of mathematical formulae. And if so, may we not plot
out conduct in such wise? If you wish your son to be an his-
torian like yourself, you may in some future time be able to
secure from the proper authority a mathematical scheme for
his education. More practically, however, biophysics is study-
ing the mechanism of pain and its measurement —in the
hope of making possible more effective treatment of disease.
Much more can be done with radium, x-rays, ultra-violet rays,
and other forms of energy. The elimination of only a few of
our most potent diseases would revolutionize history. The
historian must watch the biophysicist.

The biochemist, too, is persistent in his analysis of the
chemical contents of bodily structure and especially of its se-
cretions. With the medical world paying ever more attention
to glandular activity, this phase of science has achieved great
results. Much that used to be attributed to Providence or ill-
luck is now found to be the result of over- or under-action of
glands. Vitamins have been discovered, and many ills and wor-
ries have been found to result from the lack of a balanced in-
take of them. Experiments are now being made in correcting
such deficiencies artificially. Extracts from glands are fed to pa-
tients with marked effects, and vitamins are likewise supplied.
It is now suggested in some quarters that by extensive diet
directions and the feeding of certain chemicals the disposition
of individuals and even communities and races might be
changed. By proper feeding, some hold, the warlike might be
made peaceful, the cantankerous, gentle — and so on. The
modification of racial characteristics would have a tremen-
dous effect on history. The biochemist will bear watching.

The psychologists, too, have been having a field-day. Most
significant has been their work in emotions and their studies
of motivation. In this day of ballyhoo, advertising, and con-
tinuous radio propaganda about everything from tooth-paste
to politics, the extent of the power of suggestion is only just
beginning to be imagined. The character of this great dynamic
in human behavior is now the object of first concern to the

176 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

psychologist. Numerous studies are being made to discover
the relative importance in motivation of specific ideas, of emo-
tions, and of the vegetative drives such as hunger and sex.
This work should result in the destruction of many of our
romantic notions of human behavior and revolutionize our
explanations of human activity as heretofore formularized.
Reason will be discounted and emotion exalted to a new sig-
nificance. Much history will have to be re-written.

In other words, if these various forces can be isolated, meas-
ured, analyzed, and directed, the future of the race may be
greatly altered. Historians, it may be objected, are not pri-
marily interested in future behavior; why should they be con-
cerned? A clearer and more accurate knowledge of the dy-
namics of human behavior, however, may enable them to re-
view the evidence of the past and find there new meaning and
new significance. They can not, to be sure, raise the dead and
measure their voltages or examine the functioning of their
glands, but they may be able, from evidence available, more
accurately to deduce the causes of behavior in the past. Such
matters as diet, dress, plumbing and heating, social customs,
health, medical practice, and similar matters about which
there is much evidence, will take on new significance, and our
understanding of the process of history will be reorganized.
Egon Friedell, in his Cultural History of the Modern Age,
has made certain suggestions looking toward a different
approach.

With adequate knowledge of this type of forces it may be
possible to work out another dynamic theory. Such a theory
will show how human organic force has reacted to the greater
cosmic forces, the forces of the inorganic environment. It will
show the course of the continuous adjustment made by man,
not only of the forces which he has encountered, discovered,
and in ever greater measure released, but also the adjustment
of himself to these forces. The new biological and psychologi-
cal knowledge may conceivably produce the formulae and the
generalization which Henry Adams challenged historians to

—_——— — 7?/

HENRY ADAMS ON HISTORY 177

discover. Such a new formulation will be neither a law of
progress foretold by the Spencerians, nor will it be that law of
degradation which impressed Adams. It may well be the law
or laws of adaptation worked out in formulae of volts, ergs,
and calories, based on the secret of the human potential.

The principle of adaptation is one peculiarly fit to be used
to interpret human history. Man seems to be the organism
best fitted not only to adapt himself to his environment but
to adapt his environment to himself. Adaptation is one of the
primary concerns of life and can be made the unifying prin-
ciple of historical evolution. If the laws of adaptation can be
worked out scientifically, on a dynamic basis, that is, the laws
of interaction of measurable forces, then we shall have the
theory which Henry Adams considered necessary. History
would no longer stand as a “ Chinese Play, without end and
without lesson.”

With this possibility in view, the historical guild may well
give more heed to the probable contributions of science to
our discipline. It should be a recognized part of our graduate
training. Historians have long consorted with their brethren
of the social sciences and to mutual advantage and stimulus,
but the time has come, perhaps, to urge at least some of the
neophytes to learn to handle new tools. Graduate students of
history might well take courses in psychology and biology.
We all realize, however, the present difficulties: much of the
graduate work in the sciences is so highly specialized that it is
beyond the historical student. But so, also, is much of the
graduate offering in the social sciences. It would seem, there-
fore, that either the undergraduate must be directed early
toward the elementary courses in the scientific fields, or gen-
eral courses in science must be worked out for graduate stu-
dents in history. Such collateral work will not only give the
historian a more realistic approach to his main task but will
make him alive intellectually to the significance of these va-
rious scientific revolutions as they burst into human con-
sciousness.

178 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Henry Adams's challenge to teachers of history to seek a
dynamic interpretation still stands, even though his own at-
tempt to formulate it must be discarded. Historian and sci-
entist may well work together — but they will work in a
different direction from that pointed out by Adams. Possibly
the immediate dynamics affecting human behavior, and the
direction and acceleration of thought, will be found not in
the stars but in the glands.

THE MIGRATIONS OF THE NANTUCKET
WHALE FISHERY: AN EPISODE IN BRITISH
COLONIAL POLICY

GERALD S. GRAHAM

N the first volume of his History of England in the Eight-

eenth Century, Lecky has given a vivid description of the
dangers and terrors that beset the streets of London after
dark. He had a superabundance of contemporary sources
from which to draw the materials for his picture. The pages
of the Spectator, the Journal to Stella, the poetry of Gay —
all abound in references to the nocturnal activities of “ Mo-
hocks,” “ Scowrers,” and “ Nickers.” Various efforts were
made during the later years of George I to grapple with the
problem, but with very limited success. Then, in 1736, came
a momentous forward step in the curbing of lawlessness and
crime in London — the introduction of systematized street-
lighting.

Up to that time, London was probably the worst-lighted
large city in Europe. Not that initiative was completely lack-
ing. In consequence of “ an ingenious and useful invention
for the good of the great City,” a new scheme had been intro-
duced at the end of the reign of Charles II. Contractors agreed
to place a light before every tenth house from Michaelmas
(September 29) to Lady Day (March 25), but only until
midnight, and only on what were discriminately termed
“ dark nights.” As a result, the streets of London were wholly
unlighted for more than half the hours of darkness. In such
circumstances, the suppression of crime was impossible.

With the passing of the new measure, the lord mayor and
aldermen ordained a tax, to be collected for the setting out
of oil lamps, known as “ parish lamps,” through the city.
These were to be kept lighted from sundown to sunrise. In
a few years, more than fifteen thousand lamps were in use,
and London (hitherto lit for no more than seven hundred and

179

180 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

fifty hours a year) was burning midnight oil in her streets
for more than five thousand. By 1780, there were more lamps
in Oxford Road, alone, than in the entire city of Paris.* “ Few
measures enacted during the eighteenth century contributed
more to the safety of the metropolis than that which was
passed in 1736.” * Up to the organization of the Peelite police
force, in 1829, perhaps the greatest contributor to public
safety in the realm was the sperm-whale.

The blubber of less precious species (right-whales, as they
were called) provided oil; but aside from unexcelled ad-
vantages as a lubricant for fine machinery, spermaceti-oil
gave “ the clearest and most beautiful flame that is known
in nature,” was cheaper than vegetable oil, then in common
use, and its burning odors would not offend the most
fastidious.

. - - we are all surprised [said John Adams, who, following the
American Revolution, was trying to break the English tariff wall]
that you prefer darkness, and consequent robberies, burglaries,
and murders in your streets, to the receiving, as a remittance, our
spermaceti oil. The lamps around Grosvenor Square, I know, and
in Downing Street, too, I suppose, are dim by midnight, and
extinguished by two o'clock; whereas our oil would burn bright
till nine o'clock of the morning, and chase away, before the watch-
man, all the villains, and save you the trouble and danger of intro-
ducing a new police into the city.‘

1 Hogarth’s print of St. James's Street at night shows a lamp-lighter at work.
The lamps were fixed on posts at regular intervals, and consisted of tin vessels,
later enclosed in a glass globe, half filled with whale-oil. At first the poorest
sort of train oil was used; but this was before the authorities appreciated the
advantages of sperm-oil, which soon came to be used almost exclusively. In
this fluid fish blubber was set a piece of cotton twist, which formed the wick.
This the lamp-lighter, from the top of his rickety ladder, trimmed by means
of a large pair of scissors, and then lighted from a flaming torch of pitched
rope. See London and Suburbs, Old and New (London, July 20, 1934), for
pleasant descriptions of these scenes.

2 London and Suburbs, 61.

8 W. E. H. Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century (Lon-
don, 1878-1890) , 1, 527-

4 John Adams, Works (Boston, 1850-1856) , vitt, 308-309. Another valuable
by-product of the industry was whalebone. It was very largely employed in the
making of ladies’ stays until, after the industrial revolution, it fell into disre-

THE NANTUCKET WHALE FISHERY 181

Although the cod fisheries had long been encouraged and
were regarded from times traditional as the great nursery
for seamen, England had hitherto paid no great attention
to whale-fishing. Although it had been pursued by individual
companies since the beginning of the sixteenth century, the
industry did not assume importance, from a national point
of view, until late in the eighteenth century.* As for sperm-
whaling, in particular, it had been conducted since its inaugu-
ration about 1715, almost exclusively by colonials at or in
the neighborhood of the island of Nantucket. The discovery,
by the middle of the eighteenth century, that spermaceti-oil
was comparatively inexpensive and the best adapted to street
and house lighting provided a tremendous stimulus to this
industry.° The British government was now prepared to
participate in and to encourage this new effort with bounties
and by discriminations against colonial whale fisheries. Not

pute, “ some ladies having superseded its use in stays by supporting themselves
with plates of steel.” Of additional interest is a patent procured by Mr. H. W.
Vander Kleft, of London, dated August 17, 1813, for the invention of a
whalebone-covered walking staff, “calculated to contain a pistol, powder,
ball, and screw telescope, pen, ink, paper, pencil, knife and drawing utensils ”:
William Scoresby, History and Description of the Northern Whale Fisheries
(Edinburgh, 1820) , , 435 and 437.

5 It had been confined to the northern coasts and seas of Europe and
America, chiefly around Greenland and Davis Strait. The object of pursuit was
the Greeniand whale, the oil of which proved much less valuable than sperma-
ceti. In 1733, a bounty of 20s. a ton on the tonnage of all British whaling vessels
of 200 tons and upward was offered by the government. In 1749, this was in-
creased to 40s. a ton, with good result. For a summary of legislation with regard
to the British whale fisheries, see Scoresby, History of the Northern Whale
Fisheries, u, chapter 1, passim.

6 In his History of Massachusetts, u (Boston, 1767), 445, Hutchinson
writes, with reference to this period: “ The increase of the consumption of oyl
by lamps as well as by divers manufactures in Europe has been no small en-
couragement to our whale fishery. The flourishing state of the island of Nan-
tucket must be attributed to it. The cod and whale fishery, being the
principal source of our returns to Great Britain, are therefore worthy not
only of provincial but national attention.”

In 1730, Nantucket had a whaling fleet of 25 vessels, varying from 38 to
50 tons, and producing annually about 3,700 barrels of spermaceti-oil. In 1774,
she employed 150 vessels, averaging 100 tons a vessel, with an annual production
of 26,000 barrels. The total of American ships engaged in sperm-whaling in
1774 was 360, with a total production of 45,000 barrels of spermaceti-oil. See
Starbuck, History of Nantucket, chapter x, passim.

182 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

until near the end of the Napoleonic wars did gas begin
gradually to replace sperm-oil as an illuminant. Up to that
time, the sperm-whale was an object of increasing commer-
cial regard, and, because “no branch of our trade breeds
hardier or better seamen than the ships employed in the
whale fishery,” it developed an even more vital significance
in British colonial policy.

Encouraged by subsidies, London capitalists began to ex-
periment in the business of whale-fishing. Such experiments
as were made proved profitable; but, up to the beginning of
the American Revolution, the supremacy of Nantucket, the
centre of the sperm-whaling industry, was never threatened.
Nantucket held a strategic position on the Atlantic coast.
More important — whale-fishing was a business which re-
quired then, as now, not only extensive capital, but matured
experience. London merchants might obtain the instruments
and machinery peculiar to the occupation, but they could
not hope to compete in experience with a people who were
born and bred in it, and followed it as their one way of life.

The Nantucket sperm-whale fishery had reached a new
peak in 1774, when the first indications of approaching ca-
tastrophe made themselves evident. On February 10, 1775,
a bill was introduced into the house of commons, one clause
of which prohibited the colonies from carrying on any
fishery “on the Banks of Newfoundland, or any other part
of the North American coast.” There was an active minority
opposition who pointed out that, if the American fishery were
destroyed, the business would inevitably fall into the hands
of France. Sam Johnson added his voice to the protest, with
the argument later to be refurbished effectively by John
Adams, that “ God and Nature have given that fishery to New
England and not to Old.” The bill passed by 261 votes to 65."
As a result of an appeal to their Quaker kin in England, how-
ever, the Nantucket whalers succeeded in having this Massa-

7 Alexander Starbuck, History of the American Whale Fishery from Its
Earliest Inception to the Year 1876 (Waltham, Massachusetts, 1878) , 57.

THE NANTUCKET WHALE FISHERY 183

chusetts Bay restraining act modified with regard to whaling
privileges —a fact which explains their lack of enthusiasm
for independence during the war, and their carelessness for
their American nationality after the war was over.

Fine distinctions of law are never enforceable in time of
war. Within a few months of the outbreak of hostilities,
whaleships fell, by the score, into the hands of British pri-
vateersmen. The men were offered the choice of working in
British battleships or in British whaleships, and they gen-
erally followed the latter course. By 1788, practically all the
officers and almost all the men on the ships of the British
southern whale fishery were Americans, mostly from Nan-
tucket and Cape Cod.* Before the end of the war, in which
she had taken a completely neutral position, Nantucket had
lost by capture 134 ships and 1,200 men — in addition to
fifteen vessels, by shipwrecks.°

From the peace of 1783 to modern times, the question of
American fishing rights in British waters has remained a
thorny one. The cod was naturally the chief centre of atten-
tion, but between 1783 and 1818 the sperm-whale was curi-
ously involved in the toils of the diplomacy of Downing Street.
With the loss of the American colonies, the British govern-
ment prepared to recognize the whale fishery as an object of
national concern which must be maintained by British sub-
jects, according to the trade and navigation laws. Shelburne
and, later, Pitt favored a free-trade arrangement with the
Americans, but the opposition had been too great. The sub-
sequent refusal by the British government to admit American
spermaceti and “ right” whale-oil, free of duty, followed as
part of the policy of maintaining the navigation laws against
the new American nation. It was assumed that sufficient
capital and experience could be found to transfer the industry
to British ships alone. It was planned to renew, more gener-
ously than before, the bounty system. Some slight duties on

8 F. R. Dulles, Lowered Boats (New York, 1933) , 36 f€.
® Starbuck, American Whale Fishery, 77.

184 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

oil, blubber, and bone imported from Newfoundland were
taken off. An alien duty of £18 5s. (about $82 in American
money) a ton on sperm-oil would be quite effective, it was
believed, in precluding importation from America.’® Despite
the declamations of John Adams that spermaceti-oil could
find a market in a good many of the great European cities,”
no demand for it could equal the British — London, alone,
expending about £300,000 annually for street-lighting,’* con-
suming over four thousand tons of sperm-oil a year.” As for
the American market, although there was a gradually increas-
ing demand for oil to be used in urban lighting, the New Eng-
land farmer, on the other hand, long remained faithful to the
tallow candle.

The predictions of the British government were fulfilled.
With the renewal of peace, there came a revival of the Ameri-
can whale fisheries, but there were no markets adequate to
the output. Long immunity from capture may have made the
whales “less timid and easier to take,” but too rapid an
expansion flooded the limited American market and brought
about the inevitable reaction. Despite the assistance of boun-
ties,* Nantucket, already badly crippled by the war, faced a
new depression in time of peace. “ Like the effect of the heat
of the sun on the iceberg, so was the effect of foreign bounties
on the American fishery — dissolving it, breaking off a frag-
ment here and a fragment there.” **

John Adams warned Pitt, in 1785, that reprisals would

10 For the effects of bounties and tariffs on the American whale fishery, see
Report of the Honorable Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, on the Cod and
Whale Fisheries, February 1, 1791, 6.

11 Adams, Works, vin, 308. 12 Annual Register, 1775, 113.

18 See the report of Richard Cumberland, agent for Nova Scotia, to the
governor and council, London, December 2, 1784: “ As there is little other
market for whale oil but ours, the Americans must abandon the trade, if the
Duty was enforced against them . . .”: Colonial Correspondence, Nova Scotia,
XV, page 532; Canadian Archives, A 106, page 100.

14 The legislature of Massachusetts passed a resolution, in 1785, allowing
bounties of {5 for every ton of white sperm-oil; 60 shillings for brown or
yellow sperm-oil, and 40 shillings for “ right ” oil, taken by vessels owned and
manned wholly by the inhabitants of the commonwealth: Starbuck, History
of Nantucket, 387. 15 Starbuck, American Whale Fishery, 87.

THE NANTUCKET WHALE FISHERY 185

follow the failure of Britain to open her markets to American
whale-oil. With diplomatic naiveté, he told the prime min-
ister that it appeared unaccountable to the people of America
that Great Britain should sacrifice the general interests of the
nation to the private interests of a few individuals occupied
with the building of ships and the hunting of whales. The
remittance of American oil would pay off debts and increase
the export of manufactures, “ which would employ so many
more people, augment the revenue so considerably as well as
the national wealth . . .” **

But the determination of the government to enforce the
navigation laws in the case of foreign whale-oil represented
much more than a victory of commercial greed, as John
Adams seemed to assume, and a great deal more than a dog-
matic clinging to what some of Adam Smith’s disciples called
“an outworn fetish.” It was true that the so-called “ big inter-
ests” were narrow and selfish, and sometimes told lies, but
they could never have forced their views on the country
gentlemen in the house of commons had there not been a
real kernel of wisdom in even the most extravagant of their
claims. They were in that happy position where it was pos-
sible to link patriotism with good business. Adam Smith had
declared, in his strictly modified support of the navigation
system, that defence was more important than opulence. By
a good many merchants and shipbuilders, the statement might
have been considered as the best advertising slogan ever
written. In the popular mind, or, more accurately, in the
opinion of the house of commons, there was ample justifi-
cation for the claim that the fisheries, as a nursery for Eng-
lish seamen, were the first-line reserve of national defence.**

16 Adams, Works, vil, 307: Adams to Jay, Westminster, August 25, 1785.

17 “ The late change in the political system of France from military to
naval exertion, and the powerful acquisition of the Dutch navy to that of
France and Spain, will in all probability require 200,000 men on the part of
Great Britain; and when we recollect the difficulties, embarrassments, delays,

disappointments and heavy expenses in raising from 41,000 to 110,000 men
since the beginning of the present century [these are the totals for 1702 and

186 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

The average educated Englishman was apt to regard as
essentially short-sighted any new plan of trade which, in
any conceivable manner, might jeopardize a monopoly and,
in consequence, his country’s supremacy at sea. The youth-
ful whaling interest had little need to spend time and
money on lobbying. Their propaganda was part and parcel
of the national theory of the time, and the proper precau-
tions which were regarded everywhere as necessary for sup-
plying the navy with sailors received the enthusiastic, if not
entirely altruistic, support of all those men who found that
defence and opulence went hand in hand.

The British government lost no time in taking precau-
tions to guard their new-found monopoly. The governors in
the maritime provinces were notified to keep a sharp look-
out for smugglers. It was suspected that American fishermen,
in order to avoid the high duties, would try to ship their
whale-oil to the British provinces, whence it might be re-
shipped to London as British oil.** It was reported that
American whalers were able to obtain clearances from Hali-
fax. Under pretence of emigrating, partners from Nantucket
organizations settled at Halifax. These met their American
correspondents at sea, transferred their cargoes, returned to
Halifax, and were then able, without trouble, to secure
clearance papers for the port of London.’® The secretary of
state, Lord Sydney, immediately ordered an investigation,”

1775,» respectively] it is evident that not only the protection of our trade and
colonies depends on the northern fisheries, but also the defence of Great
Britain herself . . .”: John Knox, Observations on the Northern Fisheries
(London, 1786) , 5.

The following excerpt from the report of the board of trade of April 7,
1769, is one among many others written in similar strain. “ The encreasing the
number of seamen and extending the Navigation of this Kingdom upon which
its wealth and safety depend have been and ought to be invariably the objects
to be first attended to .. .”: Board of Trade, v1, volume go.

18 See George Rose to Thomas Carleton, treasury chambers, November 2,
1784: Colonial Office, series 188, volume CxLvi, page 69.

19 Report of Richard Cumberland to the governor in council, December 2,
1784: Canadian Archives, A 106, page 116.

20 Sydney to Parr, August 27, 1785: Colonial Correspondence, Nova Scotia,
xvI, page 85; Canadian Archives, A 107, page 175.

THE NANTUCKET WHALE FISHERY 187

but both Governor Parr* and _ Lieutenant-Governor
Thomas Carleton reported that a strict enquiry elicited no
evidence of any extensive importation of American whale-
oil.”

Meanwhile, the situation in Nantucket had not improved.
A few families had moved away, chiefly to New York and
North Carolina, where they tried to adapt themselves to
farming. But the bulk of the population remained. Some
were tied to their property; others were too poor to move
their families.** Their main hope for the future seemed to
lie in gaining the European market, by some means, and if
possible recovering the English.** For the relief of the fisher-
ies, said Thomas Jefferson to the house of representatives,
“the principle [sic] object is to find markets for the vent of
oil.” ** Just as Vermont, for the sake of an available market,
considered political union with its neighbor to the north,
so did the inhabitants of Nantucket, when hope failed, play
with the possibility of political separation from the United
States. By the beginning of 1785, it might be said that Nan-

21 On April 5, 1787, the king’s commission, appointing Parr lieutenant-
governor of Nova Scotia, was read in council. He was now subordinate to the
governor-general at Quebec.

22 Parr to Sydney, November 15, 1785: Colonial Correspondence, Nova
Scotia, xvi, page 243; also, Carleton to Sydney, December 20, 1785: Colonial
Correspondence, New Brunswick, 1, page 327.

23 “ This town [in 1784] exhibited the appearance of a deserted village
rather than of a flourishing seaport containing upwards of four thousand
inhabitants ": Obed Macy, History of Nantucket (Boston, 1835) , 81.

24 Both in London and in Paris, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
worked hard to break down the tariff barriers against American oil. “ Mr.
Adams’s head,” said Jefferson, “ was full of whale oil”: Jefferson to Mrs. John
Adams, Paris, August 9, 1786: Jefferson, Works, P. L. Ford, Editor, (New York
and London, 1904-1905) , v, 146. In France, there was some success. Regarding
their efforts to extend the market for American whale-oil, see Jefferson, Works,
Iv, 483; V, 290 and 439; and vi, 285.

25 Report on the Cod and Whale Fisheries, February, 1791, page 9. He
continued: “ England is the market for the greater part of our spermaceti oil.
. . - Nor can it be announced that there is any disposition on their part to
arrange this or any other commercial matter to mutual convenience. The
ex-parte regulations which they have begun for founding their navigation on
the ruins of ours, can only be opposed by counter-regulations on our part, and
the loss of seamen, the natural consequence of lost and obstructed markets
for our fish and oil calls in the first place for serious and timely attention.”

188 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

tucket was up for auction. It was in these circumstances that
the island entered the orbit of British diplomacy.

The first move was made from Nantucket. A joint me-
morial was forwarded by several of the inhabitants of the
island asking permission of the governor of Nova Scotia to
make settlements there, whence they could prosecute the
whale fishery.” For Nova Scotia, sunk in the post-war dol-
drums and still trying to digest her new population of
impecunious loyalists, the possibility of acquiring the Nan-
tucket organization was of the greatest significance. She pos-
sessed no whaling vessels of her own, and only four suitable
for the cod fishery.*" Entirely, therefore, on his own respon-
sibility,** Parr arranged, in the early summer of 1785, for an
experimental emigration from Nantucket. “ The affair of
the Quakers of Nantucket,” he wrote home jubilantly, in
August, “ is of the greatest moment in this province, their
returns from the spermaceti Whale Fishery amounting to
near {150,000 per annum.” * By September, three brigan-
tines and one schooner had arrived with full crews, and one
ship and three brigantines were expected to follow, along
with the families of the crews.*®° The surveyor-in-chief was
ordered to make a return of vacant lands at Dartmouth,
across the harbor from Halifax, with a view to arranging a
settlement as soon as possible.**

Lieutenant-Governor Des Barres, of Cape Breton, went a
step further. He despatched his friend, Captain Venture, in

2¢ Referred to in Parr to Sydney, July 27, 1785: Colonial Correspondence,
Nova Scotia, xvi, page 100; Canadian Archives, A 107, page 194.

27 Parr to Sydney, July 27, 1785: Colonial Correspondence, Nove Scotia, xvi,
page 273; Canadian Archives, A 107, page 109.

28 Starbuck, History of Nantucket, 389 states incorrectly: “The English
government to aid its own colonies established Halifax as a base from which
to pursue the whale fishery.”

29 Parr to Nepean: Colonial Correspondence, Nova Scotia, xvi, page 94;
Canadian Archives, A 107, page 170.

30 Parr to Sydney, September 20, 1785: Colonial Correspondence, Nova
Scotia, xvi, page 100; Canadian Archives, A 107, page 194.

31 Beamish Murdech, A History of Nova-Scotia, or Acadie (Halifax, 1865-
1867) , 11, 44.

_—

THE NANTUCKET WHALE FISHERY 189

command of a small expedition of propaganda to Martha’s
Vineyard, Nantucket, and other whaling ports, with a view
to arranging emigration to Cape Breton. Like Parr, he
pointed out to the home authorities the wholesome advan-
tages of removal; but he was shrewd enough to realize that
an act of parliament would be necessary, if the position of
the emigrants were to be completely secure. The whalers
themselves might become British subjects; but they were
not owners of British-built vessels, and some legal sanc-
tion would be necessary for their recognition as British
bottoms.**

During this time, not a few of the merchants of the prov-
ince were on pins and needles as to the eventual attitude of
the British government. A whale fishery would be an ex-
tremely worth-while addition to the colony's slender re-
sources. On the other hand, there was the alarming rumor
that Nantucket was taking steps to separate from the state
of Massachusetts, and had requested to be considered either
as a neutral island or as “an appendage of Great Britain.”
It was further reported that a Mr. Roach was embarking for
London to solicit the administration on behalf of the in-
habitants. There was news, too, of a counterplan on the
part of the French, backed by the Marquis de Lafayette for
a removal to France.** If the first rumor were true, Nan-
tucket would become a neutral entrepét, by means of which
all the oil brought in by American whalers would pass to
Great Britain clear of all duty. In such circumstances, Nova
Scotia’s bid for prosperity by means of the whale would
fall to the ground.

82 “ No vessel shall be deemed British built but such as are wholly of the
build of some part of His Majesty’s Dominions at the time of building of the
same, except ships belonging to the East India Company”: L. A. Anspach,
Summary of the Laws of Commerce (London, 1809) . Regarding certificates of

registry for British whalers, see the minutes of the board of trade: Board of
Trade, 1 volume vit.

88 James Clarke to Brooke Watson, May 25, 1785, enclosing a petition on
behalf of the chamber of commerce and traders of Shelburne, Nova Scotia:
Colonial Correspondence, Nova Scotia, xvi, page 270; Canadian Archives, A
107, Pages 105-109.

190 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

There is no evidence to indicate that the British govern-
ment considered the possibility of taking Nantucket under
its wing, or that the Nantucket representatives even
broached the topic. It was true, however, that Mr. Roach did
set sail on July 4, 1785, bound for London, and he did begin
negotiations with William Pitt, but only for the transfer to
England of such parts of the whale fishery at Nantucket as
he represented. Pitt passed the matter over to the committee
of the privy council for trade, and this body promptly pigeon-
holed it. A second request, some months later, for a per-
sonal interview, was referred to Lord Hawkesbury, the new
president of the committee and doughty defender of the navi-
gation system. Roach said of him later: “ A greater Enemy
to America I believe could not be found in that body, nor
hardly in the Nation.” * Hawkesbury listened, without en-
thusiasm, to a petition for £20,000 to cover the removal of one
hundred families. The request for leave to bring, in addition,
twenty whaling vessels to be acceptable as British bottoms
likewise fell on stony ground. Deeply chagrined at his fail-
ure, Roach took ship for Dunkirk, where his welcome proved
to be more warm. It was soon arranged that Roach and his
followers should transfer their business to that seaport.** So,
for the moment, any possibility of absorbing the Nantucket
and adjacent whale fisheries on English shores was aban-
doned.

But what was to be done with the fishermen who had
accepted Parr’s invitation to Nova Scotia, as well as those
who were planning to follow them, provided conditions
were acceptable? The new arrivals were slowly establishing
themselves at Dartmouth. Most of them were poor, and

84 Roach’s diary account of his English visit is contained in Starbuck,
History of Nantucket, 391-392.

85 Nine families of thirty-three persons accepted the French invitation,
with the promised bounties of 50 livres ($9 or $10) a ton-weight of their vessels.
Since no more followed, the French government, in order to prevent further
migrations to British territories, lowered their duties on American oil in

December, 1787. Arré:, number g: Jefferson, Report on the Cod and Whale
Fisheries, 7.

THE NANTUCKET WHALE FISHERY 191

Halifax merchants supplied much of the necessary capital.**
The provincial legislative council built houses for them and
granted £1,500 as an immediate aid to the work of settle-
ment.** A little whale-fishing colony soon took shape, with
cooperages, blacksmith forges, rope-walks, and two sperma-
ceti factories. On the daring assumption that British settlers
made British goods, three hundred and fifty tons of sperma-
ceti-oil were shipped to London, in October, one month
after the first settlers had arrived.** A few months later, the
Reverend J. Brenton, rector of St. Paul’s, Halifax, could
write: “ Our whale fishery presents an encouraging aspect
—the Brazillers are now arriving deep laden with oyl. A
ship and a brig arrived within these two days, as deep as
they can swim — The whale company will now go on pros-
perously.” * By the year 1790, the shipping fitted out from
Halifax for the whale fishery amounted to twenty-seven
ships, brigs, and large schooners. There were, in addition, a
few vessels from the provincial ports of Liverpool and Shel-
burne, but in population and perseverance they in no way
compared with the Dartmouth settlement.

Heretofore, Downing Street had displayed a regrettable
lack of conviction in dealing with the whole problem of the
Nantucket whale fisheries. In the summer of 1785, Sydney
had received a petition from representative inhabitants of
Nantucket asking for a statement of policy. Was the govern-
ment willing to legislate in favor of recognizing immigrant
whaling ships as British bottoms? The memorial mentioned
how hospitably they had been received by His Excellency,
Governor Parr, “ who has engaged to receive the inhabitants
of the island with all their property, with their vessels for
carrying on the whale fishery from this place, and has like-

36 Report on fisheries, in Dalhousie’s letter of November 24, 1817: Canadian
Archives, A 147, page 140.

37 Lieutenant-Governor Wentworth to John King, September 14, 1792:
America and the West Indies, 598; Canadian Archives, A 117, page 205.

38 Murdoch, A History of Nova-Scotia, m1, 44.

39 Colonial Correspondence, Nova Scotia, xv, page 470; Canadian Archives,
A 108, page 195. The letter is dated June 4, 1786.

192 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Wise promised us that oil taken by our vessels that are now
upon their voyages, belonging to the inhabitants that re-
move to this province and that may be shipped to England
shall be accompanied by his recommendation to your Lord-
ship, that they now being subjects of His Majesty, their oil
may not be subject to Foreign Duty.” “ Sydney made no di-
rect reply, although he noted, in a minute at the end of the
document, that the request would be recommended to the
commissioners of customs.

Towards the end of April, 1786, the British government
came to a decision. That this decision was influenced by the
whaling interests and shipbuilders is possible, for the latter
were politically powerful. The shipbuilders were bound to
resent any such infringement of the navigation laws which
admitted, by a mere act of emigration, thirty or forty foreign
ships to British register. On the other hand, it seems more
likely that the national idea predominated again. For over
a century, it had been official policy to oppose settlement in
Newfoundland. Newfoundland had always been envisaged
as a sort of floating depét during the fishing season. When
the season was over, the fishing fleet with their crews, which
yearly included “ green men,” were expected to return to
their ports on the south or west of England. But the laws
had not been enforced, and settlement had developed in
Newfoundland. The problem had already been recognized
as acute, when news arrived of the Nantucket emigration
to Nova Scotia. It was to be the signal for a new effort on the
part of the British government to redeem, as far as possible,
the policy of the past. Leading-strings must continue to hold
England’s “ nursery ” to English shores. Any encouragement
to fishing settlements in the colonies meant the loss of so
many potential sailors to the British navy.** Defence was

4° Colonial Correspondence, Nova Scotia, xvi, page 270; Canadian Archives,
A 107, page 105.

41 The basic law governing the Newfoundland fishery was 10 and 11 Wil-
liam III, cap. 25.
42 Jefferson stated that, before the war, Great Britain had less than one

THE NANTUCKET WHALE FISHERY 193

more important than colonial opulence, as the governors of
the maritime provinces were to discover, with some surprise.

Sydney's letters of the nineteenth and twentieth of April,
1786, were peremptory commands to stop the immigration
of American whalers and their families. Both lieutenant-
governors, Parr and Des Barres, were reproached for enter-
ing into engagements without instructions, particularly
when it was evident that such instructions required an act
of parliament. The irascible governor of Cape Breton re-
ceived special attention for his advertising cruise of the pre-
vious summer. He had,

. in direct violation of that Public Faith which ought con-
stantly to be observed between countries at peace, taken measures
for the removal of the subjects of the American states under a
Proclamation, wherein you have described yourself by a Title
which you ought not to have assumed, and promised indulgences
under your own authority, some of which such as supplies of Pro-
visions, Necessaries etc., it could never be the intention of the gov-
ernment to bestow.

Not only that— American whalers had already been
seized and condemned in other parts of the empire for sail-
ing under pseudo-British registers which had been given to
their captains by thoughtless colonial governors. Sydney was
willing to go no further than to admit the Nantucket fami-
lies as settlers and to accommodate them with lands. It ap-
peared to him “unnecessary and on many accounts im-
proper” to extend to them indulgences which had been
granted to the loyalists for their services. “ It is the present
determination of the Government not to encourage the South-

hundred vessels engaged in whaling; while America had three hundred and
nine. In 1788, the condition was reversed, America possessing “ about eighty,”
and Great Britain, three hundred and fourteen: Jefferson, Writings, H. A.
Washington, Editor, (New York, 1853) , 1, 523. In his Report of February, 1791,
he pointed out how the English government, since the peace, had nourished
their seapower by prohibiting all foreign fish and oil from their markets and
giving large bounties. “ This policy is said to have been so far successful as
to have raised the number of seamen ) ayes in that business in 1786 to
14,000...”

194 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

ern Whale Fishery that may be carried on by persons who
may have removed from Nantucket and other places within
the American states, excepting they shall exercise that Fish-
ery directly from Great Britain.” * In July, the latest regula-
tions governing the southern whale fishery were sent to the
colonial governors, and extra copies were included for cir-
culation in the United States.“

Parr was forlorn over the failure of his plans, the more so,
since it was to Nova Scotia, and chiefly to Halifax, that the
immigrants had come. “My chief motive,” he declared,
“was to draw from the United States a branch of trade so
valuable as to prevent their Emigrating to any country
inimical to England.” * In a second letter to Sydney, of Au-
gust, 1786, he was able to report that, since the announce-
ment of the government’s policy, all emigration had ceased,
and only one person, to the best of his knowledge, was pre-
paring to quit the American states.*

The next step on the part of the British government was
a significant reversal of policy, and it came in 1790. Five
years before this, the government had rather coldly repelled
the advances of certain inhabitants of Nantucket who
had offered to emigrate to England. They had, thereupon,
removed to France. Undoubtedly the danger of thus helping
to build up the industry and marine of their rivals had
weight. Of more immediate influence, however, was the pres-
sure of private capitalists, who were eager to use the tal-
ents of foreign fishermen to build up the native industry.
Their object was the establishment of a whale fishery at
Milford Haven, on the west coast of Wales, through the

43 Sydney to Parr, April 20, 1786: Colonial Correspondence, Nova Scotia,
xvii, page 16; Canadian Archives, A 108, page 99.

44 Colonial Correspondence, Nova Scotia, xvu, page 265; Canadian Ar-
chives, A 108, page 273; also, Colonial Correspondence, New Brunswick, 1, page
454-
45 Parr to Nepean, June 29, 1786: Colonial Correspondence, Nova Scotia,
xvil, page 272; Canadian Archives, A 108, page 257.

46 Parr to Sydney, August 8, 1786: Colonial Correspondence, Nova Scotia,
xvil, page 293; Canadian Archives, A 108, page 284.

”".0 ose &® ef"

oc
ce.

= - = bp @

THE NANTUCKET WHALE FISHERY 195

transfer of as many of the Nantucket fishermen at Nova
Scotia as could be induced to move.*

When, at about this same time, renewed and apparently
voluntary propositions were made to the ministry by a few
of the bolder spirits at Nantucket, they were, on this occa-
sion, when referred to the committee for trade, received with
attention.” It was agreed that a delegate representing the
private capitalists should be sent to Nova Scotia, as well as
the several whaling ports of the Atlantic seaboard in the
United States, to negotiate with representatives of the fish-
ermen. Bearing letters of introduction from the new secre-
tary of state, Lord Grenville, and from Mr. Evan Nepean,
who was then the under-secretary, a gentleman by the name
of Stokes set forth on this singular mission of seduction, a
quest for which Des Barres, of Cape Breton, had been re-
buked only five years previously. The most important and
the most awkward part of Stokes’s program in Nova Scotia
was, in his private capacity, to cancel, as far as possible, the
arrangements which had been made by the colonial gover-
nor for the immigrants from Nantucket. He was to prevail
upon the inhabitants of Dartmouth to remove from a settle-
ment where they had been but recently established through
the labors of governor, legislature, and merchants, and start
over again in Great Britain.

There is no doubt that the ministry had never ceased to
regret the fact that a whale fishery had ever been established
in Nova Scotia, and they had hardly forgiven Parr for his
efforts on behalf of the colony.** Stokes’s propositions were,
on the surface, the voluntary inducements of individual
capitalists. They were in the nature of a personal invitation
to come to Milford Haven. But the velvet glove of wel-

47 See the petition of persons interested in trade, agriculture, and fisheries
to Dalhousie, November 24, 1817: Canadian Archives, A 157, page 140.

48 C. F. Grenville to Nepean, February 22, 1791: Colonial Correspondence,
Nova Scotia, xx1, page 311; Canadian Archives, A 116, page 20.

49 Grenville to Nepean, February 22, 1791: Colonial Correspondence, Nova
Scotia, xxI, page 311; Canadian Archives, A 116, page 20.

THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

196
come which Stokes extended did not wholly conceal the
iron hand of Downing Street. Indeed, it was rather obvious
to the inhabitants of Halifax that the private agent was
merely a stalking horse for a ministry which had only now
made up its mind.

Grenville’s letter of introduction left no doubt in the
mind of Parr that the British government attached consider-
able importance to the mission. The secretary set forth the
national significance of the scheme, and urged the lieuten-
ant-governor’s whole-hearted coéperation. Parr at once sum-
moned a meeting which was attended by the principal whale-
fishermen, and addressed by Mr. Stokes.” A considerable
division of opinion was revealed. The English offer was
tempting, for colonial spermaceti-oil was subject to duties
which did not fall on that procured by fishermen from the
ports in Great Britain. On the other hand, a good many of
the immigrants had achieved a certain stability in Nova
Scotia, and seemed satisfied with such success as had, up to
the present, rewarded their efforts.** As for the Halifax mer-
chants and their English connections, they were both aston-
ished and enraged. In the outspoken opinion of one mer-
chant,

. - . the government may perhaps with reason lament the fishery
having ever been established here, and complain of such of its
immediate servants, as may have been instrumental in bringing
it or admitting it into the province; that being here to attempt
the recovering it, and so stripping the province of its most promis-
ing and almost only fund of support, is not likely to be taken
graciously, but operates as a pregnant notice to them (which ought
always to be avoided) that when the interests of Great Britain

5° Colonial Correspondence, Nova Scotia, xx1, page 318; Canadian Archives,
A 115, page 198.

51 For bounty discriminations, see the minutes of the board of trade,
undated, Board of Trade, v1, volume 57.

52 Memorandum from Brooke Watson to Lord Grenville, February 24,
1791: Colonial Correspondence, Nova Scotia, xxi, page 312; Canadian Ar-
chives, A 116, page 25.

THE NANTUCKET WHALE FISHERY 197

interfere, those of the colonies are not to be regarded. I am there-
fore glad at least that Mr. Stokes has not appeared expressly com-
missioned for this purpose by the Government, but by individu-
als, — but the people here are not so short-sighted, but they see
through the thing, and are I think a little touched at the Attempt.**

There were a good many other letters written, in similar
strain, which referred to the importance of the whale fishery
to the colony, and of the colony to the mother country.
Whaling was an industry which provided the most direct
article of remittance for British manufactures; the situation
of it was of strategic importance; its removal, they said, meant
ruin to the colony.” Parr followed out his instructions faith-
fully, although he lamented the fact that the government did
not inform him of their wishes five or six years before, and
had not then empowered him to encourage an emigration to
England. If such a course had been pursued, he was sure few
of the Nantucket Quakers would have remained at home,
and probably none would have gone to Dunkirk.*

About twenty-three families, or a total of one hundred and
sixty-one persons (approximately half the Dartmouth col-
ony) , were prepared to accept the invitation.** With the con-
sent of the government, they took with them thirteen vessels
for immediate use. Parr recommended that they be dealt
with generously, and apparently the secretary of state was
willing to meet their demands for losses through removal,
which were estimated to be about {6,000 sterling.** The

53 Letter of December 22, 1790 (unsigned), enclosed in a letter from
Watson to Grenville, February 20, 1791: Colonial Correspondence, Nova Scotia,
XXI, page 318; Canadian Archives, A 115, page 198.

54 Letter of January 8, 1791, from Halifax: Colonial Correspondence, Nova
Scotia, xxI, page 320; Canadian Archives, A 116, page 5.

55 Parr to Grenville (“ private”), December 31, 1790: Colonial Corre-
spondence, Nova Scotia, xx1, page 3; Canadian Archives, A 115, page 248.

56 For a list of settlers at Halifax, and emigrants to Milford Haven (prob-
ably incomplete) , see Hussey & Robinson, Publishers, Catalogue of Nantucket
Whalers and Their Voyages (Nantucket, 1876); also, Starbuck, History of
Nantucket, 389.

57 Parr to Grenville, December 31, 1790: Colonial Correspondence, Nova
Scotia, xx1, page 3; Canadian Archives, A 115, page 248.

THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

198
emigration from Nova Scotia continued until 1793. Govern-
ment pressure was judiciously applied, for Wentworth, who
succeeded as lieutenant-governor on the death of Parr in
1792, reported that “some of them were obstinate.” But he,
too, followed his instructions dutifully and buried his own
opinions, although he felt it was hard that the province
should needlessly bear the burden after expending so much
on settlement.

At Milford Haven, the industry did not prosper in the
manner that had been expected. Capital was scarce, and it
may have been this need which made the British govern-
ment willing to renew negotiations with their old suppliant,
Mr. Roach. With the outbreak of the war between France
and England, poor Roach was once more between the devil
and the deep sea, and was inclined to blame the president of
the committee for trade for his losses. ““ My going to France
to pursue the whale fishery so disappointed Lord Hawkes-
bury that he undertook to be revenged on me for his own
folly and, I have no doubt, gave direction to his Cruisers
to take any of our vessels that they met with going to
France.” * He sought safety with the mistress of the seas.
On this occasion, an act of parliament passed in 1795 per-
mitted him, with his organization, to remove to Milford
Haven, and to receive all the privileges and protections of a
British subject.”

All the Dartmouth settlers did not leave; and an effort was
made by the survivors to keep the industry on its feet. But
the sudden removal of a large section of the community was

58 Wentworth to John King (“ private”), September 14, 1792: America
and the West Indies, volume 598; Canadian Archives, A 117, page 205.

5® Roach’s (this name is sometimes spelled Rotch) Journal, quoted in
Starbuck, History of Nantucket, 399.

6° 35, George III, cap. g2, sections 36-38. See, also, the petition of persons
interested in trade, agriculture, and fisheries, presented to Lord Dalhousie,
and forwarded by him to the secretary of state, on November 24, 1817:
Canadian Archives, A 157, page 140. This petition refers to Roach’s removal
to Milford Haven. See Starbuck, History of Nantucket, 399, wherein it is
stated that Roach left England for New Bedford in July, 1794.

THE NANTUCKET WHALE FISHERY 199

a blow to their morale, as well as to their efficiency as a
whaling centre. Furthermore, the British government con-
tinued to weight the scales against whaling enterprises which
did not have their origin in England.“ Then came the war
with France, which wrought havoc, especially among people
whose livelihood lay on the sea. The whole establishment
began to dissolve, and Dartmouth, as a whaling port, soon
became a mere shadow of its former self.**

There was to be one phase more to the Nantucket story.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Nantucket had
won back much of her former prosperity. The war of 1812
provided another dread interruption. Her own petition to
the congress had accompanied the general protest against
the war sent in from New England. When this proved fruit-
less, the inhabitants petitioned Madison, on November 1,
1812, demanding, “if any stipulation can consistently be
effected with Great Britain, whereby the cod and whale
fisheries of both nations may be exempted from the ravages
of war.” Again no solution was forthcoming, and, by the
end of the war, Nantucket found herself bereft of half her
whaling vessels. Once more a large part of her population
were faced with the prospect of seeking another occupation
on the mainland.

As early as 1812, Jethro Mitchell, a prominent Quaker
resident of Nantucket, had applied to Lieutenant-Governor
Sherbrooke, asking his aid in furthering a project for the
transfer of himself and other gentlemen to Nova Scotia. He
had behind him twelve years of experience in whale-fishing,
and declared that he possessed the largest establishment for

61 “ As the law now stands, British subjects resident in Nova Scotia and
the Coast of Labrador are actually considered as Foreigners and chargeable
with a duty of {22.1 shilling per tun on the oil they take, while those of New-
foundland (British subjects residing) pay only 10s.6d. per tun”: Bainbridge,
Ansley & Company to the lords of trade, London, February 27, 1807: Board of
Trade, I, volume 33.

62 Petition of persons interested in trade, agriculture, and fisheries to Lord
Dalhousie: Canadian Archives, A 157, page 140.

68 Macy, History of Nantucket, 170.

200 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

business of oil and candles in the country. Sherbrooke had
promised to make the necessary representations, although
he discreetly pointed out that the privileges suggested by the
petitioners could be granted only by an act of parliament.™
With the outbreak of the war, Mitchell was forced to leave
the province, and the governor’s recommendations were
never sent.

The gloom of post-war Nantucket was now reflected in
numerous petitions to the secretary of state for leave to estab-
lish a whale fishery, “ on a new plan,” in Nova Scotia. They
were submitted to the committee for trade, but little consid-
eration was given them. Bathurst’s correspondence shows
that he was too deeply concerned with problems such as
the military security of the maritime provinces, to worry
much about colonial industry. But Jethro Mitchell appeared
again, in 1817, and he was persistent. He reminded Dalhou-
sie of Sherbrooke’s promises, an argument which may ac-
count, in part, for the new governor's willingness to interest
himself in the proposition, despite the fate of the whaling
colony under Parr.* Strong support was forthcoming from
the permanent committee of Halifax merchants, who had fre-
quently memorialized the governor and Downing Street, in
the past.** The committee pointed out that the present pro-
posal to re-establish the whale fishery was founded upon
more auspicious circumstances of capital than the former
project. No legislative grants of money would be required.
In short, all that was necessary was to give Mr. Mitchell, in
Nova Scotia, what amounted to practically the same privi-
leges which, by act of parliament, were provided for Mr.
Roach and company, in 1795.
~~ €4 Dalhousie to Bathurst, December 11, 1817: Canadian Archives, A 157,
Pots® Bathurst to Sherbrooke, November 14, 1815: Colonial Office, series 218,
volume xxix, page 122; also, Henry Goulburn to Thomas Lack, October 23,
1815: Colonial Office, series 43, volume LI, page 183.

*¢ Dalhousie to Bathurst, December 11, 1817: Canadian Archives, A 157,
page 150.

67 Petition of persons interested in trade, agriculture, and fisheries, for-
warded November 24, 1817: Canadian Archives, A 157, page 140.

THE NANTUCKET WHALE FISHERY 201

Mr. Mitchell wished to move his family and friends to
Dartmouth, where they would become British subjects. He
asked permission to bring his own shipping and seamen con-
sisting of four ships, an aggregate of 1,200 tons; these should
be allowed to enter Halifax and re-ship to England without
duty, and should receive British registers; their sailors
should be guaranteed against impressment, and have the
right to sail anywhere a British ship might sail, without
license from the East India, South Sea, or any other char-
tered company. Mr. Roach’s demands had not been quite so
well-defined and rigid in regard to duties, impressment, and
licenses; ** but fundamentally the conditions were the same.
The petition, however, ignored one all-important fact.
Roach, under the new policy, had come to England and es-
tablished himself in business there, under an act of parlia-
ment. Mitchell would make his home in Nova Scotia, and
British policy had been fixed in its intention to discourage
colonial whale fisheries.

But the committee for trade discussed the matter at length
and examined many witnesses. They listened to the com-
plaints of the British whaling interests and gave them se-
rious consideration, for “the Lords of the Committee”
found “ there was much alarm at the prospect of admitting
into the British market so formidable a competitor as Mr.
Mitchell.” * But such is not the explanation of their final
refusal of Mitchell’s petition.

The key to British policy and the colonial whale fisheries,
as well as the key to much of the eighteenth-century British
attitude towards colonies, lies in one simple word —“ de-
fence.”” When Secretary Bathurst forwarded to Dalhousie, in
Nova Scotia, the decision of the committee for trade, he ex-
pressed a cardinal principle of British policy overseas. Their

68 Compare Mitchell's propositions, numbers 4, 8, and 6 (Canadian Ar-
chives, A 157, page 150) with g5 George III, cap. xcu, sections 36, 37, 21, 26,
and 34.

6° Board of Trade Memorandum, London, May 14, 1819: Canadian Ar-
chives, A 160, page 203.

202 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

lordships, he declared, were always eager to promote the
trade and prosperity of Nova Scotia. On the other hand,
“. . . they cannot but think that there is considerable weight
in those Naval and Political considerations which have so
long and regularly induced the Legislature to promote by
exclusive advantages those whale fisheries which are carried
on from the Ports of the United Kingdom. With this view,
[their] Lordships feel themselves under the necessity of de-
clining to recommend a compliance with the prayer of the
Memorial.” * The eighteenth-century ideal of “ defence”
had triumphed, once again, over the growing nineteenth-
century ideal of “ opulence.”

7 Bathurst to Dalhousie, June 12, 1819: Colonial Office, series 218, volume
XXIX, page 241.

SANTAYANA’S DEBT TO NEW ENGLAND

DONALD MACCAMPBELL

N order to trace the extent of George Santayana’s indebted-

ness to New England it is necessary to go back to the year
1872, when, as a child of nine, he was brought to Boston by
his father. Having passed the beginning of his life in Spain,
he did not know a word of English. “ Nor was I likely,” he
writes, “ to learn at home, where the family always continued
to speak a Spanish more or less pure.” * It was by a happy
thought, therefore, that he was sent during his first winter
in Boston to a kindergarten where, among much younger
children, and without the assistance of books, he was able to
pick up the language by ear before he knew how it was writ-
ten. Thus it was possible for him to become able to speak
with the facility of a native New Englander, and to appreciate,
also, in after years, the rich qualities of English words.

Had it not been for this valuable kindergarten training,
Santayana’s progress in the language, both at the Brimmer
School and later at the Boston Latin School, would have been
much less rapid. The precocious taste for the metrical felici-
ties of English verse which he evidenced at both these in-
stitutions might never otherwise have been developed to so
high a degree as it was. Yet the philosopher himself would
probably reject the very thought of such a suggestion. While
it is true that Santayana grants a passing tribute to his “ ex-
cellent English master, Mr. Byron Groce” — who doubtless
deserves a lot more credit than he will ever receive for help-

1 Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Santayana are taken from
“A Brief History of My Opinions,” published in Contemporary American
Philosophy (New York, 1930) , 01.

In connection with George Santayana’s schooling in Boston, it is interest-
ing to notice that in April, 1935, the philosopher sent a message of congratula-
tion to be read at the celebration of the three-hundredth anniversary of the
Boston Latin School. By way of praising the retention of the study of Greek
and Latin, he wrote, “ The merely modern man never knows what he is about.”
Boston Herald, April 24, 1935. [S.M-]

203

204 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

ing to mold his pupil’s mind — he insists, nevertheless, that
all the more decisive influences during his boyhood came
directly from his parents, and from the Spanish atmosphere
of his home.

As a child, it seems, he played no games, but sat quietly
in the house all afternoon and evening, reading and drawing.
Religion, architecture, and geography were, he confesses
proudly, his earliest loves, and he devoured almost any sort of
book he could find on these three subjects. But one wonders
how much of this youthful interest in intellectual activities was
due to the fact that Santayana was reared in an atmosphere of
transplanted Spain — his father and his mother’s father hav-
ing been officers in the Spanish civil service — and how much
of it was due simply to the fact that he was different racially,
and therefore temperamentally, from his American school-
mates, and found their companionship uncongenial. Certainly
one does not have to search long through one’s own recollec-
tions of childhood for cases where this or that boy from a
strange town failed to fit in with the “ neighborhood gang”
and as a result developed into what was scornfully termed
a “ book-worm”; whereas had he remained at his place of
birth, he would probably never have allowed himself to be
seen with a book in his hand. As a boy in a foreign country,
Santayana, if all the facts were told, was probably lonely and
ill at ease. America, which seems always to have increased his
tragic aloofness, made him a “ book-worm” from the start.
While it is not unlikely that there were cultural influences at
work in his own home which proved more than friendly, it is
to be suspected that the negative influence outside was to a
greater degree instrumental in directing the initial course
of his career.

As an undergraduate at Harvard, Santayana majored in phi-
losophy and literature. How much influence his first year had
on his still plastic mind it is difficult to surmise, but it is impor-
tant to note that — notwithstanding the cherished Spanish at-
mosphere of his home — the embryonic philosopher felt very

_——“~= se

——~= we >

SANTAYANA IN NEW ENGLAND 205

much out of place during a visit to Madrid the following
summer. Furthermore, each succeeding summer that he spent
with his father in Europe served only to make him more con-
scious of the difference between the Old World and the New
until finally, as he himself has said, he felt even more like
a foreigner in Spain than he did in the United States. Abroad,
his Yankee manners seemed outlandish, and he realized that
he could not possibly do justice to his powers of self-expression
in the Spanish language. The thought of his alienation does
not seem to have saddened him:

nor was I inclined [he writes] to overcome this handicap, as per-
haps I might have done with a little effort: nothing in Spanish life
or literature at that time particularly attracted me. English had
become my only possible instrument, and I deliberately put away
everything that might confuse me in that medium.

In short, then, Harvard, by setting before his mind the
treasures of English literature, had put him in her debt by
teaching him to prefer the culture of the country of his adop-
tion to that of Spain. Her next service was to develop his
interest in the study of philosophy.

Il

At that period Harvard College had assembled what was
probably the greatest department of philosophy that has ever
existed in this country. Santayana could have done much
worse than fall under its influence. Surveying it in retrospect
many years later, he writes:

It was a vital unit, codperative in its freedom. There was a general
momentum in it, half institutional, half moral; a single troubled,
noble, exciting life. Everyone was laboring with the contradiction
he felt in things, and perhaps in himself; all were determined to
find some honest way out of it, or at least to bear it bravely. It was
a fresh morning in the life of reason, cloudy but brightening.*

2 Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States (New York, 1920) ;

see the close of the first chapter.
Definite information as to George Santayana’s career at Harvard is not

206

Santayana’s debt to this little, but famous, group of thinkers
must certainly have been enormous — at least in his under-
graduate days. In his autobiographical essay, however, he
stubbornly insists that the most important influences on his
life while he was at Harvard continued to come from his
home!

Santayana’s mother would seem to have been a deist. His
father, although officially a Catholic, was actually an agnostic
who made it his policy carefully to avoid all the established
forms of superstition. He himself had been regularly shipped
off to Unitarian churches to listen to sermons which, be-
cause of their strange combination of earnestness and way-
wardness, afforded him continual surprise. He tells us that
when he began the formal study of philosophy as an under-
graduate at Harvard he was “already alive to the funda-
mental questions, and even had a certain dialectical nimble-
ness, due to familiarity with the fine points of theology: the
arguments for and against free will and the proofs of the
existence of God were warm and clear in my mind.” * Even
so, is there not something a little perverse about his efforts
to wink at the question of his indebtedness to America?
That Santayana resented being called an American — save
“by long association” — is a fact generally known and
archly acknowledged; the pose must have afforded consider-
able amusement to his colleagues at Harvard. It is probable,
therefore, that in his persistent attempts to deny the impor-
tance of New England influences on his life, the philosopher
is indulging the vanity of trying to appear as un-American
as he would like to be. Whatever the reason, it seems fairly
clear that the lectures of Palmer, Royce, and James did much

THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

easy to obtain: his classmates are vague; his former colleagues are reticent or
coy; and they who were his students are too often merely idolaters. For an
amusing picture of Santayana as a student, interested readers should turn to
an account of the curious circumstances in which he was awarded the Boylston
Speaking Prize in Sanders Theatre, as recorded in the journal of Richard
Henry Dana, for May 14, 1885. See Bliss Perry, Richard Henry Dana, 1851-
1931 (Boston and New York, 1933) , 183-184. [S.M.]

8 Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States, 244.

ee

SANTAYANA IN NEW ENGLAND 207

to mature, and even to refine, his remarkable mental powers.
Though he listened to them with “ greater wonderment than
agreement,” and was able, even as an undergraduate, to dis-
course with the lecturers themselves “ as something like their
equal,” it does not follow that the association was, even for
the most part, fruitless. Certainly it could not have been alto-
gether so. Although he has refused to recognize an “ indebted-
ness,” Santayana, in discussing the merits of these three men,
has occasionally had to confess the “ effect ” which they had
upon him.

From Professor Palmer, he tells us, he learned one lesson
in particular — one which he was later to learn again from
Paulsen, in Berlin:

I refer to the historical spirit of the nineteenth century, and to
that splendid panorama of nations and religions, literaturés and
arts, which it unrolled before the imagination. These picturesque
vistas into the past came to fill in circumstantially that geographi-
cal and moral vastness to which my imagination was already accus-
tomed. Professor Palmer was especially skilful in bending the
mind to a suave and sympathetic participation in the views of all
philosophers in turn: were they not all great men, and must not
the aspects of things which seemed persuasive to them be really
persuasive?

This same tolerant and sweet reasonableness in the face of
conflicting systems and dogmas Santayana reflects in all his
writings, and it is quite possible that he acquired it at an
early stage in his career from the gentle Emersonian spirit
which peivaded the lectures of George Herbert Palmer.
Royce and James, he declares, were his principal teachers.
“ The influence of Royce over me, though less important in
the end than that of James, was at first much more active.
Royce was the better dialectician, and traversed subjects in
which I was naturally more interested.” From him it is possi-
ble that Santayana gained substantial aid in bringing to per-
fection his own brilliant flow of dialectic, but what is more
certain is that there was something about Royce’s scholastic

208 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

spirit that fascinated him despite the fact that he was seldom
in agreement with the Californian’s teachings. “The point
that particularly exercised me,” he writes, “was Royce’s
Theodicy or justification for the existence of evil. It would
be hard to exaggerate the ire which his arguments on this
subject aroused in my youthful breast.” Royce, in other
words, had what may be called a provoking influence on his
thought: when tempted himself to rest too heavily upon the
uncertain foundations of logic, when intrigued by the mere
play of formal relations in thought, Santayana had only to
think of Royce in order to take care for the dangerous con-
sequences of elaborate sophistries.

Turning to William James, we have Santayana’s word for
it that his own belief that thought is controlled and consistent
madness came to him originally through his association with
the great pragmatist. He refers to the early James, however:
“ the puzzled but brilliant doctor” — not the later James of ro-
mantic metaphysics. It was the early James who had been his
master: the despiser of metaphysics whom he had known in
his undergraduate days; the man whose maxim it was that
the best way to understand the normal was to study the ab-
normal; the professor who had risen to heights of fame as the
genial author of The Principles of Psychology. But Santayana
is unwilling to let even this confession of Jamesian influence
pass without qualification. “ Even then,” he adds, “ what I
learned from him was perhaps chiefly things which explicitly
he never taught, but which I imbibed from the spirit and
background of his teaching. Chief of these, I should say, was
a sense for the immediate: for the unadulterated, unex-
plained, instant fact of experience.” When James turned im-
mediate experience into ultimate physics, Santayana was
forced to abandon him, foreseeing that the illustrious pro-
fessor was driving his chariot of dialectic too far into the
dark valley of superstition. And yet:

I pride myself on remaining a disciple of his earlier unsophisti-
cated self, when he was an agnostic about the universe, but in his

SANTAYANA IN NEW ENGLAND 209

diagnosis of the heart an impulsive poet: a master in the art of re-
cording or divining the lyric quality of experience as it actually
came to him.

Apparently then, judging even from such modest, or grudg-
ing, acknowledgments as these, the family influence was not
all!

III

In 1896 Santayana took a year’s leave of absence to study
Plato and Aristotle at King’s College, Cambridge. “ By that
study and change of scene,” he writes, “ my mind was greatly
enriched. And the composition of The Life of Reason was
the consequence.” In other words, Santayana would have his
readers believe that the single year which he spent abroad
in spiritual company with the ancients was enough in itself
to provide sufficient material and illumination for the mak-
ing of five substantial volumes on the life of the human rea-
son —a statement which is noticeably absurd. New England
had reared him, taught him the fundamentals of a great lan-
guage, introduced him to the felicities of a prodigious litera-
ture, placed him in the midst of the most distinguished school
of philosophy America has ever produced, made intellectually
possible the very advantages which he boasts of having de-
rived from his academic experiences abroad. Was she then,
in the face of all this, to receive no share in the glories of his
literary achievement? The statement is more than absurd:
such disregard for gratitude is open to suspicion.

On returning from his leave of absence, Santayana settled
down in-Cambridge to teach philosophy. As a member of
the Harvard faculty from his twenty-seventh to his fiftieth
year, he had every opportunity he could desire to cultivate his
love of free and independent living. Academic life in New
England gave him chance enough “to dream with one eye
open; to be detached from the world without being hostile
to it.” Indeed, the very fact that so little is known of his actual
life in Cambridge goes to show how successfully he contrived

210 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

to conceal himself frcm the offensive glare of modern pub-
licity. Margaret Miinsterberg relates how he lived alone in
simple quarters, with few books and few friends, and prac-
tically no luxuries whatever.‘ “ He smiled with a little bitter-
ness,” writes Will Durant, “at the popularity of his col-
leagues, and remained aloof from the crowd and the press;
but he knew that he was fortunate to have found a home in
the finest School of Philosophy that any American university
had ever known.” ®

Santayana is indebted, both socially and intellectually, to
the extreme individualism of nineteenth-century and early
twentieth-century New England: he was allowed not only to
live alone but to think alone as well. The shy culture of Boston
has shown a marked tendency — at least in recent times —
to tolerate almost any form of civilized heresy. The current
belief that the Puritan tradition in New England has stifled
all free play of intellectual initiative is one of the popular
errors in American history. The fact that most of the more
important philosophical movements in America — from tran-
scendentalism to new-humanism —have grown and pros-
pered in New England shows with just how much seriousness
this notion should be taken. Santayana himself remarks on
the tolerance and freedom which he found at Harvard, and
without too much of his usual devastating irony, so that
one may reasonably believe that in his life there he was al-
lowed to withdraw himself from the impositions of custom
and convention altogether as fully as he could have done at
any other large university in the western world.°

This leads to another consideration. Free as thought always
has been in modern New England, it can not be denied that
the inhabitants of this section of the country have been un-
usually conscious moralists ever since the days of Jonathan
Edwards. They have been preéminently concerned with the

4 American Mercury, 1 (1924), Number 1.
5 Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (New York, 1926) , 532.
® Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States, 58-59.

SANTAYANA IN NEW ENGLAND 211

nature of what has commonly been called “ the good life.”
Thoreau had this in mind when he went off to live at Walden.
Brook Farm was the creature of this fancy. All the leading
thinkers of New England, whether sons by birth or adoption,
have devoted much of their lives to moral problems. The
smell of brimstone in the air served to remind people of the
traditional difference between what was called “ good” and
what was called “ evil.” It is no wonder, therefore, that San-
tayana, notwithstanding his outspoken contempt for the unc-
tion of the pulpit, developed into one of New England's great-
est moral philosophers, and became unwittingly a part of the
very “genteel tradition” which he denounces to-day with
critical self-assurance. Mr. Horace Kailen has shown very
clearly in a brilliant essay that “ it is in the line of Emerson
that the spiritual genealogy of Santayana, the American, is to
be sought.” Referring to the philosopher's relation to the
genteel tradition as a whole, he adds: “ That he should have
escaped their contagion would have argued an insensitiveness
altogether contrary to his nature: his very strictures upon
them show how deeply they influenced him.” *

Of minor importance, perhaps, was the zsthetic influence
which the soil itself must have had upon the poetic tempera-
ment of Santayana. Apart from her quaint colonial villages,
her museums and galleries, New England has natural beau-
ties in abundance — sufficient, certainly, to gratify the most
fastidious of spiritual appetites. Santayana was well aware
of this. “ Of course,” he writes, “ the sky is above every coun-
try, and New England had brilliant sunsets and deep snows,
and sea and woods were at hand for the holidays. .. .”*
One of his favorite pleasures was the walk between Cambridge
and Brookline which he took frequently — ostensibly for the
purpose of visiting relatives. His most casual references to
natural background reveal the fact that in his heart he ad-
mired and loved, if only secretly, this aspect of living in New

7 Journal of Philosophy, September 29, 1921.
8 Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States, 51.

212 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

England. Cape Cod, in particular, was a spot which never
failed to inspire him.

The low sandy beach and the thin scrub pine,
The wide reach of bay and the long sky line

—such lines show sympathy, if not warm feeling and affec-
tion. But the cape is only one of the many natural splendors
of this section, and when one stops to count the number
of poets and dreamers whom New England has nourished
and inspired in the past, one hesitates to believe that San-
tayana’s sensitive nature was untouched by the variety, the
loveliness, and the charm of the country in which he grew
up.

There is one “debt” more to be considered — the influ-
ence of “ Reason” itself upon the mind of a professor at
Harvard during the early years of the twentieth century.
Those distant days, it is hardly necessary to remark, were a
period of extreme enthusiasm for this concept. Reason was
apotheosized with solemnity; according to Santayana, it did
not occur to anybody, at the time, to doubt its divinity. Along
with the others, he seems to have paid undue deference to
this treacherous goddess — both orally and in print — with
the inevitable result that upon his permanent withdrawal
to foreign soil he experienced a substantial change of heart:
he knew that he had been deceived. If he did not literally
abandon his former object of worship, he came in time —
with the publication of the second preface to The Life of
Reason — to put the lady, once and for ever, in her proper
place. It is interesting to skip the two decades which separate
the first preface — written in America — from that which was
prepared abroad for the revised edition. The latter, it may be
said with reasonable certainty, marks a definite line of separa-
tion between his early thought and that of the more mature
works: Scepticism and Animal Faith and The Realms of Be-
ing. It also seems to free the philosopher from any charge of
further indebtedness to America.

SANTAYANA IN NEW ENGLAND 213

Twenty years [he writes] separate me from the man I was when I
wrote this book — years enlivened for me by many changes of
scene and branded by a great war. There is hardly a page that
would not need to be rewritten, if it was perfectly to express my
present feelings. . . . I now dwell by preference on other perspec-
tives, in which the same objects appear with their relative bulks
reversed, and inversely hiding one another; what lay before in the
background — nature — has come forward, and the life of reason,
which then held the centre of the stage, has receded. The vicissi-
tudes of human belief absorb me less; the life of reason has become
in my eyes a decidedly episodical thing, polyglot, interrupted, in-
secure. I cannot take every phase of art or religion or philosophy
seriously, simply because it takes itself so. These things seem to me
less tragic than they did, and more comic; and I am less eager to

choose and to judge among them, as if only one form could be
right.® ‘

From this point on, Santayana devoted his attention to the
Old World. To-day, the aging philosopher, who resides in
Rome, looks back with considerable amusement upon the
rationalizing professor who taught for twenty years at Har-
vard. He now dwells by preference on other perspectives.
Nature, always somewhat in the background of the pro-
fessorial outlook, comes into her own at last. Skepticism,
seldom the prerogative of pedagogues, enters into full play.
Reason, always worshipped naively by the academic mind
in any period, recedes to its proper place in the nature of
things. This, one suspects with Santayana, is a position at
all times subordinate to the conditioned desires of the hu-
man mechanism. To-day, the subjective state of mind which
Santayana tells us prevailed at Harvard and encouraged a
prompt conversion no longer holds him in chains. To-day, he
seems an intrinsic part of no particular culture, a stranger
in all lands, at home only in his imaginary limbo discoursing
learnedly with Democritus and Socrates, with Aristippus and
Avicenna.

® Santayana, The Life of Reason (New York, 1925): Preface to the second
edition, v and vi.

214 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Much of the old indebtedness, however, still remains. To
decide how much of it was effectively cancelled, how much of
it was honestly acknowledged, and how much of it was well
repaid by the philosopher himself during the course of his
life — this will be the task of the inevitable biographers.

THE RESISTANCE OF THE SOUTH TO
NORTHERN RADICALISM

CLEMENT EATON

N December 22, 1859, an extra train arrived at Rich-

mond bringing over two hundred medical students from
Philadelphia. It was the hegira of southern students from
the North following the excitement of John Brown’s raid. The
faculty and students of the Richmond Medical College, the
town council, and the Southern Rights Association exultantly
welcomed them. All formed in procession and marched past
the beautiful capitol designed by Jefferson to the governor’s
mansion. The armory band preceded them playing martial
and stirring airs. Here they listened to Governor Henry A.
Wise, standing on his porch and indulging in a tirade of in-
candescent southern oratory. One of the students gracefully
responded. Then they retired to the Columbian Hotel, where
the hospitality of the Old South had prepared “a beautiful
collation ” for them.*

Governor Wise, fond of magniloquent phrases, said, “ Let
Virginia call home her children! ” He assured them that they
had acted wisely in leaving a hostile community to build up
southern schools and rebuke the North for its fanaticism.
Thus the reproach so often made against the South, that negro
slavery paralyzed learning and science, would be proved un-
true. In that perfervid way of his, he said:

Let us employ our own teachers, (applause) , especially that they
may teach our own doctrines. Let us dress in the wool raised on
our own pastures. Let us eat the flour from our own mills, and if
we can’t get that, why let us go back to our old accustomed corn
bread. (Loud applause) .?

1 The Richmond Semi-Weekly Enquirer, December 23, 1859: Virginia State
Library.
2 The Richmond Daily Dispatch, December 23, 1859: Virginia State
Library.
215

216 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

The migration northward of many young southerners to
study in the schools and colleges had long been gall and worm-
wood to the fire-eaters. Yet the pull of northern colleges
was too strong to be resisted. Even the ardent pro-southern
Governor Wise had been educated at Washington College,
Pennsylvania. Calhoun had received his fine training at Yale
and Litchfield; Robert Toombs had studied at Union Col-
lege; Judah Benjamin, at Yale; and Jefferson Davis, at West
Point. At the University of Pennsylvania, out of the four hun-
dred and thirty-two students attending in 1846, two hundred
and sixty-five were from the South, mostly medical students.’
Yet these northern colleges, as Professor Arthur Cole has
pointed out, had slight success in nationalizing the southern
students who attended them.* Such an alarming patronage of
northern institutions by the gifted youth of the South seemed
to be a confession of weakness in the idyllic slave régime, as
though the repression of free thought in the South had
dwarfed her institutions of learning. But there was a very
present practical danger in the sons of southern planters at-
tending northern colleges. They would be exposed to “ the
pernicious ideas ” prevalent in the North.

What were these ideas which seemed dangerous to south-
ern minds? “ Parson” Brownlow, editor of the Knoxville
Whig, answered the question in his terse, vivid language. He
proposed an organization called “the Missionary Society of
the South, for the Conversion of the Freedom Shriekers,
Spiritualists, Free-lovers, Fourierites, and Infidel Reformers
of the North.” * His catalogue of the pernicious ideas beyond
the Potomac, however, was far from complete. In the Chardon
Street Convention of the Friends of Universal Reform at
Boston (1840), the “lunatic fringe” of the reform move-
ment held high carnival. Here there was gathered, according

3% Edward Ingle, Southern Side-Lights (New York, 1896) , 144.

4 Arthur C. Cole, The Irrepressible Conflict, 1850-1865 (New York, 1934),
52.
5 W. G. Brownlow, Ought American Slavery to be Perpetuated: a debate
between Brownlow and Prynne (Philadelphia, 1858) , 167.

NORTHERN RADICALISM 217

to Emerson, a pandemonium of the northern “ isms,” Mug-
gletonians, Dunkers, come-outers, Seventh-Day Adventists,
strident feminists, abolitionists, Unitarians, philosophers, and
many persons whose church was a church of one member
only.* The North had become a germinating centre for fever-
ish reform movements and strange cults. Boston was regarded
in the southern states as the capital city of “ the isms,” al-
though western New York was almost as preéminent in
radicalism.”

The southern people, emphasizing the common sense of
plantation life, looked more with amusement than alarm at
the antics of the northern reformers. When the Fox sisters
began to give their seances in New York about 1850, they
were irreverently referred to in the South as the “ Knocking
Girls of Rochester.” * The spiritualist craze in the North,
leading to numerous spiritualist circles and the establishment
of the Spiritual Telegraph, found no echo of credulity in the
South.® When the feminists held a convention at Seneca Falls,
New York, and drew up a “ Declaration of Independence of
Women ” that followed closely the great document of Jeffer-
son, the South was disposed to look on the humorous side of
the movement. An article in De Bow’s Review, in 1857, en-
titled “ Black Republicanism in Athens,” contained a witty
satire on the bloomers and strong-minded women of the
North. The author compared them to the women of the
Eccleziazusa.° The Sons of Temperance founded in Tee-

6 R. W. Emerson, Lectures and Biographical Sketches (Boston, 1887),
35!-354-

7 Governor Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, who had never stepped upon the
soil of New England, wrote to his cousin in Boston, a son-in-law of Edward
Everett: “ Why don’t he [Everett] and such as he in New England wield such
pens against the wild ‘isms’ of Massachusetts. Their moral influence would
overthrow the monster. Boston seems to be a center of ‘isms’.” Wise to
Lieutenant Wise, September 11, 1855: Henry A. Wise MSS., Library of Con-

8 The Southern Literary Messenger, January, 1851: an article on “ The
Night-Side of Nature.”

® The Southern Literary Messenger, July, 1853: an article on “ Spiritual
Manifestations”; ibid., June 1854: an article on “The Credulity of the
Times.” 10 De Bow’s Review, xxi (1857) .

218 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

totaler’s Hall, New York, even secured many converts in the
South, but “ Maine-lawism,” or the prohibition law imposed
on the state of Maine by Neal Dow, in 1851, was spoken of
with scorn, for it invaded personal liberty.

The South confronted the various extravagances of the re-
forming zeal of the North with aristocratic detachment, re-
garding them as middle-class enthusiasms. Both sections were
deeply touched by the romantic movement of the time. In the
North, romanticism manifested itself in a passion for making
over society according to the dreams of perfectionists, Fourier-
ites, feminists, abolitionists, and transcendentalists. In the
South, on the other hand, the romantic movement looked to
the past for its inspiration, to the dream of a Greek democ-
racy, or to the feudal charm of Sir Roger de Coverley days."
Consequently the Oneida Free Love Colony and Trialville
in Ohio were unthinkable below the Potomac. They fur-
nished a happy label, however, for use against the Republi-
cans in 1856, “ Free Love and Fremont.” ** The South was
almost wholly free from disturbing social adventures. Frances
Wright had attempted a radical colony of negroes and whites
at Nashoba, Tennessee, and the Icarians had sought to found
a utopia of communism in Texas, but both perished on south-
ern soil.** To most southerners they were mere names, the
names of far-away vagaries. But reformers like Harriet
Beecher Stowe and the English feminist, Harriet Martineau,
aroused the South to unchivalrous epithets, for they had cut
southern sentiment to the quick in their strictures on slavery
and the morality of southern men.* Two of the corrosive
~~ 42 Vernon L. Parrington, The Romantic Revolution in America, 1800-1860
(New York, 1927) , 99-108; 317-434.

12 The Richmond Enquirer, September 13, 1856.

18 W. R. Waterman, Frances Wright (New York, 1924), 92. For an ac-
count of the communistic societies in America of the period, see J. H. Noyes,
History of American Socialisms (Philadelphia, 1870), and W. A. Hinds,
American Communities. Brief Sketches of Economy, Zoar, Bethel, Aurora,
Amana, Icaria, the Shakers, Oneida, Wallingford, and the Brotherhood of
the New Life (Oneida, New York, 1878) .

14 See the angry review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in the Southern Literary

Messenger (1852), 631; also the review of the Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,
ibid. (1853) , 322.

NORTHERN RADICALISM 219

ideas of the North, skepticism and abolitionism, were re-
garded as endangering the very foundations of southern so-
ciety. Unfortunately they were not met by the serene war-
fare of Thomas Jefferson, truth fighting error, unassisted by
force.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century skepticism was
prevalent among the aristocratic and cultivated planters. The
South had many cultural contacts at the time with England
and the continent. The reading of the French and English
skeptics and deists was a fashionable pastime.** Even as late as
1828, Elisha Mitchell came across several deists and free-
thinkers in the course of a geological tour of North Carolina.
One of these quaint deists had been elected senator seven
times from Onslow County, despite his free-tthought.** Buck-
ingham, during his travels in the slave states (1841) , attended
the public funeral of a recently converted deist at Athens,
Georgia. This gentleman, Judge Clayton, was a graduate of
the University of Georgia and its most zealous patron. Until
the year before his death he had openly avowed himself a deist
without affecting his honorable standing in society. But such
men were the relics of a by-gone century.** After 1835, deists
and skeptics disappeared in the South. In that year President
Thomas Cooper, “the great apostle of Deism,” was driven
from South Carolina College and a new chair, the professor-
ship of the evidence of Christianity, was created to instill
correct doctrine in the minds of southern youth.** Thomas R.
Dew, president of William and Mary College, wrote the epi-
taph of skepticism in the South in an article for the Southern
Literary Messenger (1836)

15 William Hooper, Fifty Years Since: an address before the University
of North Carolina (Raleigh, 1859) , 39: pamphlet in the library of the Uni-
versity of North Carolina. See, also, H. M. Jones, American and French
Culture, 1750-1840 (Chapel Hill, 1927), chapters x and x1.

16 Elisha Mitchell, “ Diary of a Geological Tour”: James Sprunt His-
torical Monographs, number 6, page 9.

17 J. S. Buckingham, The Slave States of America (London, 1842), U,
60-61.

18 B. M. Palmer, The Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell (Rich-
mond, 1875), 145-146.

220 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Avowed infidelity [he declared] is now considered by the en-
lightened portion of the world as a reflection on head and heart.
The Humes and Voltaires have been vanquished from the field,
and the Bacons, Lockes, and Newtons have given in their adhe-
sions. . . . The argument is now closed forever, and he who now
obtrudes on the social circle his infidel notions manifests the
arrogance of a literary coxcomb, or that want of refinement which
distinguished the polished gentlemen.**

The older liberalism of the South, departure of which was
thus announced, was the delicate fruit of a colonial aristoc-
racy, different from the cotton-capitalists of a later epoch.

In this later stage, orthodoxy in the South was threatened
by two new sources of danger, one proceeding from Europe,
and the other from New England. The researches of Sir
Charles Lyell, around 1830, cast a disturbing light on the
Mosaic account of the origin of the world. In New England
arose the refreshing liberalism of the Unitarian and transcen-
dental movements. During the struggle against slavery, also,
the New England radicals directed resounding blows against
the literal interpretation of the Bible and the authority of
conservative ministers.

The recent study of geology, involving an examination of
the strata of the earth containing remains of the different
orders of animal life, naturally turned men’s thought to the
origin of man himself. By 1845, the knowledge of Lamarck’s
theory of the transmutation of the species had penetrated the
South. In 1854, Josiah C. Nott, a professor in the University of
New Orleans, published his Types of Mankind, which denied
that all men came from a common ancestor. The theory had
been advanced in the South that the negro, not the lordly
white man, may have descended from a chimpanzee or orang-
utan.” On the eve of the Civil War, notices of Darwin’s theory
reached the South. The editors of the University of North

19 The Southern Literary Messenger (1835-1836) , 768.

20 See a review of Nott’s Types of Mankind, by W. A. Cocke, in the Southern
Literary Messenger (1854) , 661.

i ee ee ee ee ee |

— =<

NORTHERN RADICALISM 221

Carolina Magazine noted the reception, in 1860, of copies of
the Westminster Review and the London Quarterly Review
containing articles on Darwin's Origin of the Species, but they
did not comment on the startling hypothesis of evolution.”
The absorbing questions of politics and secession at this time
overshadowed any interest in a bizarre theory.

The reaction of the South to the flood of light which science
threw upon the sacred mysteries was that of fear and intoler-
ance. In justice to the South, it must be said that the conserva-
tives of New England also vehemently resisted the iconoclastic
tendencies of the new science. Professor Silliman, of Yale,
tried to make the findings of geology tally with the facts of
Genesis, and for this purpose he drew up a table of coinci-
dences between the two. It was a scholar in a southern state,
Dr. Thomas Cooper, of South Carolina College, who, in a
pamphlet On the Connection between Geology and the Pen-
tateuch (1833) , rebuked Professor Silliman for his “ absolute
unconditional surrender of his common sense to clerical or-
thodoxy.” ** Cooper, however, had received his early educa-
tion in England and was an exotic plant in the southern states.
Much more representative of the southern point of view was
the criticism of Lamarck’s theory of the transmutation of the
species by a reviewer in the Southern Literary Messenger
(1845) : “ Grant to Lamarck the slightest possible transmuta-
tion of the species, and you have no good reason to deny that
a monkey was your forefather.” ** Even Josiah Nott’s theory
of the diverse origins of the races was not accepted in the
South, although such a doctrine of racial inequality strength-
ened the southern argument for slavery. This radical theory
was held to be a flat contradiction of revelation, and its sup-
porters were no better than Tom Paine or Voltaire.

21 University of North Carolina Magazine, September, 1860: library of the
University of North Carolina.

22 G. P. Merrill, The First One Hundred Years of American Geology (New
Haven, 1924) , 157; see, also, Maurice Kelley, Additional Chapters on Thomas
Cooper (Orono, Maine, 1930) , 18-24.

28 The Southern Literary Messenger (1845) . 334-

222 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Attacks on infidelity and skepticism became a favorite
theme of commencement speakers in the colleges of the South.
One of the most gifted scientists the Old South produced,
Matthew Fontaine Maury, took up the cudgels in behalf of
orthodox religion in an address before the students of the
University of Virginia (1855) . In this address, entitled “ Sci-
ence and Religion,” he clung tenaciously to the literal inter-
pretation of the Bible. He maintained that the Mosaic ac-
count of creation was correct, and that Job was a learned book
on science. He smoothed out the inconsistencies between the
findings of science and the account of revelation by the follow-
ing process of reasoning: “ If the two cannot be reconciled,
the fault is ours, and is because, in our blindness and weak-
ness, we have not been able to interpret aright either the one
or the other.” * The prevailing attitude of colleges toward
skepticism at this time was expressed in the rule at the Uni-
versity of North Carolina that if any student denied the being
of God or the divine authority of the Scriptures, or tried to
promulgate any principle subversive of Christian religion, he
should be dismissed.** Such regulations for southern students
of ante-bellum days were hardly necessary, for student opin-
ion was strikingly conformist.” In fact, attending camp-meet-
ings was a major sport among the students.

From New England emanated a current of radicalism that
caused even greater opposition below the Potomac than the
theories of Lyell and Lamarck. It was not the impact of a

24 Diana Fontaine Corbin, Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury (London,
1888) , 160.

28 Acts of the General Assembly and Ordinances of the Trustees for the
Organization and Government of the University of North Carolina (Raleigh,
1852) , chapter v1, section 1: pamphlet in the library of the University of North
Carolina.

26 See the University of Virginia Literary Magazine, January, 1857, and
January, 1860: “ Religious Reforms.” Also, E. M. Coulter, College Life in the
Old South (New York, 1928): chapter vi, “ The Coming of Religion.” Oc-
casionally a rebel would arise. A young Virginian wrote in 1850: “ We find a
secret silent abhorrence and dread in many minds of everything which par-
takes of a geological nature.” He protested against this fear of “ studying

nature’s works ": Jefferson Monument Magazine (January, 1850) , 106: library
of the University of Virginia.

eree!* ©

NORTHERN RADICALISM 223

new theology that created disturbance. The teachings of the
Unitarian leaders, William Ellery Channing and Emerson,
scarcely penetrated the frontier of the slave states. According
to the census 2f 1860 only one of the two hundred and sixty-
three Unitarian churches in the United States was situated in
the South.** There was one remarkable southerner, however,
who read Emerson’s works and was converted to Unitarian-
ism, Moncure Daniel Conway of Falmouth, Virginia. After
studying at Harvard, he had a distinguished career as a Uni-
tarian minister and reformer. His father reflected the point
of view of his section when he wrote to Conway expressing his
pain at such “ horrible views on the subject of religion.” *
James Henley Thornwell, perhaps the most intellectual di-
vine of the Old South, studied at Harvard a short while in
1834, and wrote a most intolerant criticism of the Unitarian
faith dominant there. To a friend in his native state of South
Carolina he wrote:

I room in Divinity Hall, among the Unitarian students of The-
ology; for there are no others here. I shall expect to meet and give
blows in defence of my own peculiar doctrines [Presbyterian]; and
God forbid that I shall falter in maintaining the faith once deliv-
ered to the saints. I look upon the tenets of modern Unitarianism
as little better than downright infidelity. Their system, as they
call it, is a crude compound of negative articles, admirably fitted
to land the soul in eternal misery.”

But southerners were shocked more by the iconoclastic
views of Garrison and his coterie of abolitionists than the mild
liberalism of the Unitarian and Universalist churches. In
1848 Garrison and his followers held an anti-sabbath conven-

27 This isolated Unitarian church was in Louisiana. Of the 58 Sweden-
borgian churches only one was situated in the South; of the 17 spiritualist
churches, not a single one existed on southern soil; and only 20 Universalist
churches, out of the 664 in the country, were to be found in the southern
states: Eighth Census of the United States, 1860; Mortality and Miscellaneous
Statistics (Washington, 1866) , 500-501.

28 Moncure Daniel Conway, Autobiography, Memoirs, and Experiences
(Boston, 1904) , 1, 188.

29 B. M. Palmer, The Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell, Ex-
President of the South Carolina College (Richmond, 1875), 117-118.

224 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

tion in Boston. The call for this radical assembly, published
in the Liberator, declared the sabbath to be an exclusively
Jewish institution, that no day of the week was holier than
any other, and that laws which enforced sabbath observance
were a shameful act of tyranny.” Five years later, a Bible con-
vention was held at Hartford, Connecticut, to inquire into
the authenticity and authority of the Jewish and Christian
Scriptures. In this assembly, Garrison introduced resolutions
denying that the Bible was the literal word of God, and de-
claring that the Scriptures “ are to be as freely examined, and
as readily accepted or rejected, as any other books, according
as they are found worthless or valuable.” * In his pulpit at
Boston, Theodore Parker bitterly attacked the slave-holders
and at the same time preached a religion which rejected
miracles. Thus Garrison, Parker, and Wendell Phillips were
regarded with extreme aversion in the South as infidels of the
most dangerous tendency. The union of abolitionism and re-
ligious radicalism in the North caused southern planters to
cleave all the more obstinately to the literal interpretation of
the Bible.** This attitude was strengthened by a similar rever-
ence for interpreting the constitution strictly — and literally.

The Mason and Dixon line, however, possessed no magic
property of separating the religious liberals from the religious
conservatives. In the hinterland of Pennsylvania many of the
farmers were living in the dark ages of belief. On their great
red barns was painted the sign of the “ hex ” to ward off evil
spirits, and “ hex ” doctors practised a primitive superstition.
In New England, also, the conservatives had a fanatical re-
gard for the sabbath and for orthodoxy in religious beliefs.
Students of Trinity College, at Hartford, tried to break up
the Bible convention of the radical abolitionists in 1853 by

30 The Liberator (January 7, 1848). The Harvard University Library has
a practically complete file of The Liberator.
31 W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1889) , 11,

82 R. L. Dabney, A Defence of Virginia and of the South (New York,
1867) , 23.

itl,

NORTHERN RADICALISM 225

stamping, groaning, and cursing, and derisive laughter. Even
some of the most respected leaders of thought in New England
assumed a conservative attitude toward doctrines and scien-
tific discoveries that tended to disturb religious dogma. Wil-
liam Ellery Channing, one of the greatest religious revolution-
aries of his day, was reluctant to abandon his belief in the
supernatural element of the old religion, which was rejected
by radicals of a younger generation.** When Darwin’s theories
were introduced into New England, Professor Louis Agassiz,
at Harvard, and James Dwight Dana, at Yale, opposed them
— partly because of the influence of religious feeling.*

On the other hand some brave free-lances in the South
dared to hold heretical views about religion, as Samuel Jan-
ney, president of the Virginia secession convention, Charles
Fenton Mercer, John Minor, and Edmund Ruffin. Edmund
Ruffin has recorded in his diary that whoever should venture
to use his own judgment and disagree with the interpretation
of the Bible by the preachers in Virginia would be immedi-
ately suspected and charged with opposing the Christian re-
ligion. Ruffin’s own children thought that his rejection of
the commonly accepted interpretation of the Bible was a
grave delinquency. He was effectually silenced from discuss-
ing religion at all by the intolerant atmosphere of his native
state, and he recorded his surrender to the forces of intoler-
ance by resolving to try to be silent on religion.** Francis
Lieber, for twenty years professor at South Carolina College,
was another sturdy rebel against orthodoxy. In 1853, he
wrote that a drunken fellow in the legislature had moved
to inquire into his orthodoxy, but the motion was laid on
the table.** Despite his magnificent intellect he was defeated

83 Parrington, The Romantic Revolution in America, 338.
34 B. J. Loewenberg, “ The Reaction of American Scientists to Darwinism ”:
American Historical Review (July, 1933). Agassiz continued violently to

oppose Darwinism until his death, but Dana was later converted to the new
views.
35 Edmund Ruffin, Diary, June 1, 1859: MSS. in the Library of Congress.
36 Lieber to Samuel B. Ruggles, January 12, 1853: Lieber correspondence
with Samuel B. Ruggles: MSS. in the Library of Congress.

226 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

for the presidency of the college in 1855 because he was not
a thorough-going Calvinist and was suspected of abolitionism.
To a friend in the North, he wrote an ironic letter explain-
ing his rejection: “ What a man I would be had I become
a Methodist! ” **

The fear of skepticism in the South was not to be compared
to the exaggerated fear of New England abolitionism. The
danger of stirring discontented slaves to revolt constituted
an ever-present “ Black Terror” in the South. No proper
study has yet been made of the southern fear of servile re-
volt.** Such a study would be fundamental to any adequate
understanding of the reason why southerners suppressed all
criticism of slavery and refused to permit abolitionists to
cross the “ frontier.” The safety of the people who govern is
always the supreme law. The southern states, however, in
their resistance to northern anti-slavery propaganda went far
beyond the demands of safeguarding the community from
servile revolt.** They sought to segregate the minds of the
white people from the virus of New England radicalism.

One of the most liberal-minded southerners, the historian
Francis Lister Hawks, proposed a comprehensive plan of
meeting the northern menace. His proposals were: (1) Let
the South educate her sons at home, but let her make educa-
tional opportunities as good as those of the North; (2) let
her use no violence against incendiaries and abolitionist emis-
saries she might detect within her borders; let them be dealt
with according to the law; (3) let southerners discriminate
between friends and enemies at the North; (4) let the South
establish direct trade with Europe; (5) let her develop
southern manufactures.*° Some of the most violent southern

37 Lieber to Samuel B. Ruggles, December 13, 1855: Lieber MSS.; see, also,

Thomas S. Perry, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber (Boston, 1882) , 277-
285.

38 W. S. Drewry, Southampton Insurrection (Washington, 1900) . See, also,
U. B. Phillips, American Negro Slavery (New York, 1918) , chapter xxu.

39 See Clement Eaton, “ The Freedom of the Press in the Upper South ”:
Mississippi Valley Historical Review (March, 1932) .

#0 Francis Lister Hawks to David Swain, president of the University of

NORTHERN RADICALISM 227

partisans demanded the exclusion of northern text-books
from the South. President William A. Smith, of Randolph-
Macon College, was a zealous propagandist for purging the
text-books used in the South of sentiments or suggestions of
abolition. “The poison which our texts now contain,” he
declared, “ must be distilled from them by the learned of the
land.” ** The Southern commercial conventions and De
Bow’s Review were also ardent advocates of the same policy.*
Bishop Leonidas Polk proposed, in 1856, to found the Uni-
versity of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee.** At this institu-
tion the sons of southern planters should drink “ pure and
invigorating draughts from unpolluted fountains,” and no
longer patronize northern colleges. The University of Vir-
ginia could not qualify as the educational centre of the South,
for it was not central enough nor was it “ sufficiently cot-
tonized.” ** The campaign to persuade southern youths to
withdraw from northern colleges and enter colleges nearer
home was condemned by some national-minded southerners,
as John A. Gilmer, of North Carolina, who was later offered
a cabinet post by Lincoln. In a speech at Philadelphia (1859)
Gilmer spoke of those southerners who withdrew their chil-
dren from northern schools on account of sectional preju-
dices as “ silly men.” *

The coming of northern immigrants into the South fur-
nished another avenue by which northern radicalism could
penetrate. In 1857, Eli Thayer, who had organized the Emi-
grant Aid Company for colonizing Kansas, conceived of a
North Carolina, and at one time governor of North Carolina, January 3, 1860:
Swain Papers: MSS. in the library of the North Carolina state historical
commission.

41 William A. Smith, Lectures on the Philosophy of Slavery (Nashville,
Tennessee, 1856) , 29.

42 De Bow’s Review, xx, 351. See, also, Bessie Louise Pierce, Public
Opinion and the Teaching of History in the United States (New York, 1926) ,
for an extended discussion of the subject.

43 W. M. Polk, Leonidas Polk, Bishop and General (New York, 1894), 1,
199-239.

44 De Bow’s Review, xxm, 1857: “ A Central Southern University.”

45 North Carolina Standard (Raleigh, January 7, 1860): library of the
University of North Carolina.

228 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

plan of settling Yankees on the worn-out lands of tidewater
Virginia. He had already established a thriving little colony
of northerners at Ceredo, in western Virginia.“ But this plan
of northern anti-slavery men invading the very heart of the
Old Dominion aroused bitter defiance. The witty editor of
the Richmond Examiner declared that Thayer proposed to
descend upon Virginia with fragrant hordes of adventurers
fresh from the onion patches of Connecticut and the cod-
fisheries of the Bay State, and thereby make lower Virginia
“ a paradise of onions, squashes, stringbeans, and ‘ liberty.’ ” **
The other leading papers of Virginia, the Enquirer, the Whig,
and the South, joined in the chorus denouncing “ the Vandal
Invasion of Virginia.” “ Distrust of northerners became in-
tense after the criminal conspiracy of John Brown. Any sus-
picious-looking northerner who came into the South after that
event was liable to be tarred and feathered. W. W. Holden,
editor of the infiuential North Carolina Standard, urged
(January 7, 1860) that a license tax should be imposed on all
professional men educated at the North of at least one-half
their fees, and that northerners entering the South to pursue
their callings should be taxed in as drastic a fashion.

The need of combatting northern criticism led to the de-
mand for a southern literature that would present southern
civilization in the most favorable light. George Fitzhugh, of
Port Caroline, Virginia, writing in De Bow’s Review, in 1857,
declared the South could permit New England to make her
shoes but not to write her books.** The South had been in-
doctrinated upon the rightfulness of slavery by a long line of
polemical writers from the time of Thomas Dew to George

46 Ceredo Crescent (October 24, 1857): library of the American Anti-
quarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.

47 Richmond Examiner (April 3, 1857): Virginia State Library.

48 Richmond Enquirer (September 17, 1856); Examiner (May 22, 1857) ;
New York Tribune (March 18, 1857). The Norfolk Southern Argus, on the
other hand, said, “Let them come.” If the northern settlers did locate in
Virginia, they would soon become converts to southern institutions: Southern
Argus (April 22, 1857) .

49 De Bow’s Review, xxi.

-

NORTHERN RADICALISM 229

Fitzhugh, and David Hundley. Their works, however, were
not literature. The polished editor of the Southern Literary
Messenger, John R. Thompson, issued a call for a sectional
literature in an address of 1850.

It cannot be denied [he said] . . . that there exists at this time a
peculiar necessity for a home literature, and by this I mean a lit-
erature adapted to the institutions by which we find ourselves sur-
rounded, and to the general framework of our society. Fanaticism
in all of its forms, but worst of all in that fell shape of modern
abolition which with impious tread, has dared to confront the
presence of the Divine Majesty itself and mock at its revelation,
stalks abroad through the land.”

In truth, though the South needed propaganda equivalent
to the effectiveness of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the fervent ap-
peals to produce a sectional literature fell on barren ground.”
The example of Athens during the Age of Pericles producing
immortal literature in a land of slavery was not to be repeated
in the ante-bellum South — for more reasons than one.
Many complex factors explain the momentum of the ante-
bellum South toward conservatism during the time that New
England was becoming a centre of radicalism. D. R. Hundley,
educated at the University of Virginia and Harvard, sug-
gested an explanation in his Social Relations in Our Southern
States: the southern planter lived out-of-doors, riding and
hunting, and thus developed a sanity of outlook which
made him foreign to the fanaticism of the North. The pre-
dominantly rural condition of the South undoubtedly con-
tributed to the resistance to northern radicalism. Yet this
point should not be over-stressed, for in colonial days and
during the revolutionary period, when the South was even

more bucolic, the leaders of liberalism were southerners. In

50 John R. Thompson, Address Before the Literary Society of Washington
College, Lexington, Virginia (June 18, 1850) , 32.

51 See Virginius Dabney, Liberalism in the South (Chapel Hill, 1932),
chapter vu.

52 D. R. Hundley, Social Relations in Our Southern States (New York,
1860) , 40-41.

230 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

New England, the lyceum, which was a facile instrument for
popularizing the reforms of the day, attained an immense
vogue. The southern states, with few exceptions, did not
share in this movement for adult education which encour-
aged enthusiasm for reform. The North itself was partly
responsible for the reactionary attitude of the South. In at-
tacking slavery with violence and want of intelligence, north-
ern agitators aroused the intolerance of the South toward all
reforms bearing the label “ northern.” And finally, the insti-
tution of slavery was itself a great weight in favor of conserva-
tism. So firmly was it fixed in the fabric of southern society,
that even idealistic southerners were opposed to any drastic
disturbance of the status quo. Robert E. Lee expressed this
feeling when he wrote in a letter of 1856 that the holding of
slaves was an evil, but that their emancipation would sooner
come from the mild and melting influence of time than from
the storms and contests of fiery controversy.

Only an atmosphere of good will and understanding could
have led to an interchange of ideas and fruitful reforms be-
tween the North and the South. Both sections were parochial,
New England as distressingly so as South Carolina or Ala-
bama. Never having ventured beyond the Potomac, north-
erners entertained a distorted idea of the South and of the
relations between the black man and the white man. Con-
versely, southern people seldom came face to face with a
Yankee. A small, fashionable set, it is true, made the yearly
pilgrimage to Saratoga and Newport. Washington was also a
meeting-ground of politicians from both sections, and their
ladies. But the rank and file of southerners, having no con-
tacts with northern people, held a stereotyped image of the
Yankee that was nothing short of a caricature.** Because of
this ignorance of conditions in the North, southerners made

ss B. B. Munford, Virginia’s Attitude toward Slavery and Secession (New
York, 1910) , 101.

54 See U. B. Phillips, “ The Central Theme in Southern History ”: Ameri-
can Historical Review (October, 1928), 32, for a view of the abolitionist
through southern eyes.

—_—— ~~ »

———

NORTHERN RADICALISM 231

the fundamental mistake of exaggerating the numbers and
importance of the northern radicals.”

An excellent antidote to the antagonism between a radical
North and a conservative South would have been travel. The
Virginia liberal, William Alexander Caruthers, realized the
virtue of travel in cultivating inter-sectional comity and
good will. “ Every southern [sic] should visit New-York,” he
wrote in The Kentuckian in New-York. “ It would allay
provincial prejudices, and calm excitement against his north-
ern countrymen.” * The drawback to travel as a solvent of
sectional antipathies is the fact that by no means all travellers
move about with open minds. Even as capable an observer as
Frederick Olmsted allowed his anti-slavery prejudices to color
his view of the South. In contrast to Olmsted, who was fas-
tidious about personal comfort, the genial Paulding had the
right temperament for a visitor to the South. He would
avoid stopping for the night at the neat, newly painted
house, but he would seek out an old, rusty mansion. “ If I
saw a broken pane stuffed with a petticoat,” he wrote, “ then
I was sure of a welcome.” **

The interchange of newspapers and magazines would also
have contributed to an enlightened understanding. But influ-
ential northern newspapers, as the New York Tribune, or
magazines like Harper's and Putnam’s did not have a wide
circulation in the southern states. During times of excitement
they were indeed regarded as dangerous, incendiary publica-
tions. Thus the South tried to reduce its contacts with the
North to a minimum and pursue a policy of splendid isola-
tion. Resistance to northern radicalism, both fanatical and
liberal, became an emotional imperative with its people.

55 Governor Wise revealed a typical southern point of view. “ We can’t be
made to comprehend here how it is that the Sumners and Wilsons and Bur-
lingames of Massachusetts should not be in a majority of the masses when they
are so strong in the offices and in the influence of the North.” Wise to Lieu-
tenant Wise, October 6, 1856: Wise MSS., Library of Congress.

56 Parrington, The Romantic Revolution in America, 42.
57 J. K. Paulding, Letters from the South (New York, 1817), 1, 125.

THE CONTROVERSY OVER EVOLUTION
IN NEW ENGLAND

1859-1873
BERT JAMES LOEWENBERG

O the historian of thought and culture the key to the

nineteenth century is found in the scientific renaissance.
The multifarious results of this movement, the evidences of
which are apparent in every aspect of our complex civiliza-
tion, are yet to be appraised. It is the story of the subjection
of power, a symphony in iron and steel which has been
summed up in the word industrialization. That, however, is
but the introductory chapter; the sequel concerns more elu-
sive but ultimately more important factors. It is the chronicle
of new thought-patterns, of new ideals, of a subtly transformed
outlook upon life. Among the many influences which con-
tributed to this revised Anschauung was the doctrine of evo-
lution, at once the parent and the offspring of the scientific
advance.

The introduction of the hypothesis of evolution precipi-
tated a debate which has few equals in the annals of polemical
literature. It opened another battle in the perennial warfare
between science and theology which was destined to rage until
almost the close of the century. The provocative implications
of the new theory stimulated thought in every field of schol-
arly endeavor, here as well as abroad, and a new era in pro-
ductive research may be dated from its advent. The biological
sciences were the first to feel its impact and soared to majestic
heights of productivity and speculation under its patronage.
The social sciences, theretofore in a stage of comparative in-
fancy, blossomed into wholesome adolescence; while philoso-
phy, with the new facts gathered from the scientific storehouse,
built cosmology anew.

It was in the realm of theology that modern science created
the greatest consternation. John Fiske rightly stated that the

232

oo. ee

aT

EVOLUTION IN NEW ENGLAND 233

nineteenth century would later be known as the period of the
decomposition of orthodoxies,’ but it was not merely evolu-
tion which brought about this distintegration. Although that
doctrine was probably the most significant factor, the period
was one of theological ferment in which the prevailing forms
of organized religion were imperiled by several independent
but closely related movements. The study of comparative re-
ligions, the rise of the higher criticism, and the tremendous
growth of mechanical efficiency, which has earned for our era
the title “ machine age ” — although born of an earlier gen-
eration — now appeared on the American scene to bewilder
harassed theologians. The first, coupled with modern science,
of which it was a part, challenged the intellectual basis of the
religious system; mechanical efficiency, meanwhile, forced a
readjustment in the social relations of American Christianity.

While Darwin and Wallace were grappling with the prob-
lem of species and Spencer was pondering Von Baer’s embryo-
logical conclusions, the American clergy were confronted with
other matters of a vastly different nature. The discussion over
the slavery question had found its way into ecclesiastical coun-
cils where theological distinctions were rudely thrust aside in
the struggle for sectional dominance. The anomaly thus cre-
ated was later aggravated by the need for healing these organic
schisms and the chaotic influences of a post-war psychology.
While the conflict and its immediate aftermath absorbed the
best energies of the nation, the stimulating discoveries of mod-
ern research did not remain unnoticed. Those who owed their
allegiance to that variety of orthodoxy known as fundamental-
ism could not long remain silent on the issues presented by
science and philosophy.

The first period of the controversy in America extended
from the publication of Darwin’s work in 1859 to the death of
Louis Agassiz in 1873 and may be denominated the period of
absolute rejection. The preoccupation of the public mind to-

gether with the newness of the evolutionary idea and the

1 John Fiske, Excursions of an Evolutionist (Boston, 1884) , 269.

234 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

doubtful attitude of scientists * united to make the wholesale
denunciation of frightened theologians the distinguishing
note. New England was the main battle-ground of this first
period, and New Englanders either by birth or residence were
among the most distinguished contributors to the contro-
versy. Many believed that religion had become the victim of
an atheistic conspiracy. Formal proof was not required; one
has but to weigh the implications of modern scholarship to
find the basis for such fear. The simultaneous appearance of
science, Biblical criticism, and the study of other religions
supplied evidence enough, and this evidence was further con-
firmed by the obvious relation these studies bore to one
another. Moreover, the acclaim with which each scholarly pro-
nouncement was received by the unorthodox lent credence to
such a conviction. The confusion thus created was increased
by the ill-comprehended but apparent changes in the condi-
tions of life. These were so unprecedented as to cause at least
one Protestant cleric to envisage a new civil war based upon
religious issues.* The abuse to which Darwin and his col-
leagues were subjected by fundamentalist writers furnishes a
human document vitally interesting to both the historian and
the psychologist. People trained in the modern spirit find it
difficult not to be weary or impatient with this dismal exhibi-
tion of arrogance.

The religious periodicals took the appearance of the Origin
of Species as a signal to denounce the book and its author and
to anticipate any objections which might be raised by implica-
tion against revealed religion. Thus the Princeton Review, a
scholarly exponent of Presbyterianism, predicted that the dic-
tates of modern science together with “ the atheistic physics
of Oken; the analogues of St. Hillaire; the uniformitarian
doctrines of Lyell; and the theory of different origins of men

2 American Historical Review, xxxvi (July, 1933): Bert J. Loewenberg,
“ Reaction of American Scientists to Darwinism,” 687.

8 Religious Magazine and Monthly Review, xt1v (August, 1870), 120:
A. D. Mayo, “ The Impending Conflict of Christianity.”

EVOLUTION IN NEW ENGLAND 235

by Agassiz . . . [were] inevitably tending to that Hades
where so many once popular theories have already gone ”; ¢
while it was the hope of the reviewer in the Methodist Quar-
terly that the imperfections of the geological record would
serve to consign Darwinism to the same place. This writer
felt that Darwin had made neither a reasonable nor a safe
bargain “in putting off an immediate creation . . . in ex-
change for, at one instant, of . . . life sufficient for the start
of a universal system.” * A succeeding contributor in the same
journal objected that he was “ not as yet convinced that such
is the law of any part of God’s creation ” and would not, there-
fore, discuss its bearings on theology, but, he concluded, “ we
are satisfied that as an explanation of the origin of species,
natural selection will prove a delusion, and science will soon
consign it to its appropriate place in the museum of curious
and fanciful speculations.” * The New Englander, true to its
orthodox tradition, dismissed Darwinism with the respect due
“an old exploded theory ” and reviled its author, who had
compromised “ his character as a scientific man and a philoso-
pher ” as a consequence of such a performance.’ Natural selec-
tion was hardly a year old when this periodical condemned it
as lacking completely in testimony and based on the shallow-
est type of reasoning. It submitted the volume to a searching
cross-examination, elaborated at length on the absence of a
fossil record of intermediate varieties and brought its refuta-
tion to a sarcastic climax with the remark that “ unfortunately
they have all perished but if they had not perished analogy
teaches us that we ought to find them, and therefore we may
believe that did exist.” A writer in the Christian Examiner,
the most erudite of Unitarian publications, pronounced the

doctrine essentially atheistic and censured Darwin, for rea-

* Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, xxxu (October, 1860) , 603:
“ The Logical Relations of Religion and Natural Science.”

5 Methodist Quarterly Review, xtu (April, 1860) , 338.

6 Methodist Quarterly Review, xtm (October, 1861) , 627.

7 New Englander, xix (April, 1861), 323: Edward A. Walker, “ The
Present Attitude of the Church Toward Critical and Scientific Inquiry.”

236 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

sons which are not quite clear, because he cast suspicion on
ancient truths in a work which professed to be scientific.*
Catholic writers were no more inhibited by sympathetic
feelings for Darwin and his views than other orthodox be-
lievers and accorded the Origin of Species much the same
treatment. The Catholic World, then the leading magazine
of the denomination, roundly condemned the doctrine of evo-
lution and expressed its confidence that “the greater light
thrown upon it, the more glaringly palpable will become its
absurdity.” The rapid conversion of scientists and the edu-
cated public, while disconcerting, was not without explana-
tion but was due to their “ atheistic views,” which were the
“ chief inducement urging them to accept the theory.” Those
who regarded the evidence in support of derivation as conclu-
sive were swayed by the “ bias of a foregone conclusion ” for,
as a matter of fact, the evidence, such as it was, “ was grossly
at variance with evolution and strictly in accordance with the
doctrine of special creation.” * Not satisfied by mere rejection,
this writer presented the “converse theory” that “ animals
and plants have degenerated under nature, and that the favor-
able modifications which arise under domestication are caused
by reversion to the perfect type.” *° Another reviewer belong-
ing to this group announced that he did “ not believe a word
in Darwin's theory of natural selection . . . nor its kindred
theory of development or evolution of species.” ** Others en-
dorsed these sentiments by insisting that the central thesis of
the Origin was fantastic because of “a well-known universal
rule which sets at naught the speculations and stultifies the
pretensions of the Darwinian school.” ** This “ well-known
universal rule,” which gave such assurance to all theological
~~ 8 New Englander, xvi (May, 1860), 516 and 518; Christian Examiner,
xLvim (May, 1860) , Fifth Series, vi, 449; and the Methodist Quarterly Review,

xii (October, 1861) , 606.
® Catholic World, x (November, 1869) , 252-253: “ The Immutability of

10 “ The Immutability of Species,” 254; cf. T. Warren O'Neill, Refutation
of Darwinism, and the Converse Theory of Development (Philadelphia, 1880) .

11 Catholic World, x1 (September, 1870) , 731: “ Hereditary Genius.”

12 Catholic World, xxv (March, 1878) , 775: “ Dr. Draper on Evolution.”

ee

ee

EVOLUTION IN NEW ENGLAND 237

writers, was the belief in immutability, which had ruled the
kingdom of science with almost undisputed sway. This belief,
it may be remarked, was a theological, as well as a biological
concept, indebted as much to classical writers of the church as
to Cuvier. The confidence imparted by such distinguished
precedent was augmented by the persistent opposition of
Louis Agassiz and the doubtful attitude of men like James
Dwight Dana,” so that this writer felt justified in saying that
“it is almost inconceivable how a man who is not resolved to
injure his scientific reputation could so far forget himself and
his science as to pretend a blissful ignorance of this known
truth, in order to propagate a silly imposture exploded by phi-
losophy and contradicted by the constant unequivocal testi-
mony of nature itself.” ** A contributor to the Catholic Advo-
cate, published at Louisville, Kentucky, seriously suggested
that Darwin had perpetrated a huge hoax upon the learned
and when he perceived “ that he could turn an honest penny
by it put it forth as the latest and best discovery of science”
and now “ laughs in his sleeves at the stupidity of the numbers
he has gulted into believing it as true.”** One prominent
clergyman of the Methodist persuasion felt that the “ leading
facts of zodlogy ” were “ so utterly at variance with the theory
of the transmutation of species” ** that no additional argu-
mentation was necessary; while another gentleman, not a
clergyman, countered that Omniscience would hardly have
“amused himself with trilobites, mollusks and inferior ani-
mals of a low organization, for millions of years; when his sole
aim and intention, was to form but a temporary habitation
for human beings. . . .” *7

18 Loewenberg, “ Reaction of American Scientists to Darwinism,” 698.

14 “ Dr. Draper on Evolution ”: Catholic World, xxv (March, 1878) , 775;
“ Answer to Difficulties ”: ibid., x1 (December, 1870) , 331; “ Origin of Civiliza-
tion ”: ibid., xu (June, 1871) , 493-

15 Index, u (August 12, 1871) , 250: “ The Ignorance of the Clergy.”

16 L. T. Townsend, Credo (Boston, 1869) , 101, note.

17 Houghton F. Miller, The Great Lecture, Harmonizing the Creation and

the Structure of the Earth with the First Chapters of Genesis (New York, 1870) ,
22.

238 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

The subsequent appearance of The Descent of Man, in
1871, outraged the orthodox beyond endurance. It was suffi-
ciently presumptuous to reassert the “ often rejected theory
of transmutation of species ” ** in defiance of every accredited
law of science and philosophy, but to stretch it to include man
was beyond the bounds of reason. The Reverend Justin
Dewey Fulton, Baptist pastor at the Tremont Temple in Bos-
ton, preached a sermon on “ Darwinism — infidel to God and
Humanity” ** and another based on the significant text,
“ God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, nor even
this publican,” * which were characteristic of many similar
discourses.” His indignation so far outweighed his prudence
that he asserted that the supporters of Darwinism were “ will-
ing to come from a monkey in order to support the . . . the-
ory against the truths of God and the Bible.” ** Such unbridled
effusions dismayed the friends of religion and irritated the
radical elements, who collected instances of theological in-
tolerance with gleeful enthusiasm. This particular specimen
provoked the editor of the Index, the most renowned anti-
Christian paper in America, to reply that the elder feared
“lest, being made in the image of God, he should find in the
Darwinism theory that his God was a monkey.” * A contribu-
tor to a local Methodist paper of Cleveland, Ohio, rejected
this portion of Darwinism in no uncertain terms. “ We are
satisfied,” he wrote, “ with the Adam of Eden, the Adam of
God, the Adam with the documents, the Adam attested by
every instinct of our nature and every affinity of our life. Our
religion is getting its last confirmation, by the contrast of the
foolishness of the world opposing it.” ** Evangelical Christian-
ity had no monopoly on this type of utterance. A writer in the

18 Methodist Quarterly Review, xtm (October, 1861) , 627.

19 Index, mn (June 24, 1871) , 198.

20 Index, u (June 17, 1871), 191.

21 For example, see Popular Science Monthly, m1 (October, 1873) , 763.

22 Index, u (June 17, 1871) , 191.

23 Index, u (June 24, 1871) , 198.

24 Index, u (July 15, 1871), F. E. Abbot, “ The Clergy,” 218; the source
of this is unknown.

ee eee ee

i, i

EVOLUTION IN NEW ENGLAND 239

Unitarian Review, for example, upbraided Darwin for hav-
ing torn out “ the richest and most explicit pages in the theist’s
book” and substituted what he chose to call a “ hotchpotch
of semi-arabesque scrawls, presenting only delusory appear-
ances of meaning,” ** a view which many were happy to en-
dorse. The sentiments of this entire class were voiced by the
Catholic World in an exceedingly able article dedicated to
the extirpation of Darwinism.

Mr. Darwin [wrote the author] takes for granted that mankind
wishes to decide whether man is the modified descendant of some
pre-existing form. This gratuitous supposition implies that man-
kind is still ignorant . . . of its true origin. . . . We have an
authentic record. . . . The Bible tells us very clearly that God
created them . . . and so long as Mr. Darwin does not demolish
the Biblical history of Creation he has no right to assume that there
may be the least reasonable doubt regarding the origin of man.”

The Catholic church officially decreed that “if anyone
shall say that Divine Revelation includes no mysteries, truly
and properly so-called, but that all dogmas of faith may, with
the aid of natural principles, be understood and demonstrated
by reason, duly cultivated, let him be anathema” *’ and
further anathematized all those who believed “ human sci-

ences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one

25 Unitarian Review, m (March, 1875), 240: L. J. Levermore, “ What is
Darwinism? ”

26 Catholic World, xxvi_ (December, 1877) , 498: “ Descent of Man”; and
xvi (May, 1873), 154: “ We do not need . . . [the facts of evolution] to ac-
count for the phenomena about us”: “ The ‘Evolution of Life,” Catholic Ad-
vocate, cited in the Index, m (April 13, 1872), Supplement: “. . . it teaches
that man, having first been a tadpole, became a monkey and then wore off
his tail by sedentary habits”; to the same effect, see E. S. Gaillard, Medical
and General Science as Vindicators of the Mosaic Record and as Repudiators
of the Modern Doctrines of Development and Selection (Louisville, Ken-
tucky, 1872), 46 and 49; Homo v. Darwin: A Judicial Examination of State-
ments Recently Published by Mr. Darwin Regarding the “ Descent of Man”
(Philadelphia, 1872) , v.

27 Popular Science Monthly, vi (January, 1875) , 369; these resolutions were
passed i in 1869, and in 1870 they were further discussed and partially reprinted
in the Old and New Monthly, 0 Gaptenber, 1870) , 353: 1. B. Torricelli, “ First
Voices from the Council.”

240 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

may be allowed to hold as true their assertions, even when
opposed to revealed doctrine.” * A place was found on the
Index Prohibitorum for the Conflict Between Religion and
Science, by Professor John William Draper, of New York
University, although Darwin’s volumes miraculously escaped
the ban.”

Among the Catholic denunciators the most important fig-
ure was that surprising, if able, son of New England — Orestes
A. Brownson.* With other virile Catholic defenders Brown-
son shared the distinction of having been born outside the
faith he championed.” He was a spiritual vagabond in search
of those elusive verities which most men seek but seldom find.
New England Presbyterianism repelled him,** and he sought
in Universalism * and Unitarianism ™ the solution which he
ultimately found in the Church Universal. Yet in other mat-
ters he renounced authority and assumed what was then a
radical position. His sympathetic interest in the welfare of
the laboring class and his connection with the premature
“ Workingman’s Party” startled many of his Boston neigh-
bors, to whom such social views were obnoxious * and his final
conversion, consequently, occasioned no little surprise.

28 Torricelli, “ First Voices from the Council.”

29 Index, vu (October 19, 1876) , 493; George H. Putnam, The Censorship
of the Church of Rome (New York and London, 1907) , 1, 407; Popular Science
Monthly, x (November, 1876) , 106: “ Dr. Draper’s Book at Rome.”

80 The best source for information on Brownson is his collected papers:
Henry F. Brownson, Editor, Works of Orestes A. Brownson, 20 volumes (De-
troit, 1884) ; also a life by the same author, Opinions of Orestes A. Brownson
(New York, 1893). There is a good sketch in the Dictionary of American
Biography, and a more revealing one in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

81 Notably St. George Jackson Mivart. The Paulist Order in this country
was composed of converts, who began the publication of the American Catholic

Quarterly Review in 1876. This magazine contains some of the finest defences
of the Catholic position.

82 Brownson, Works, v, 11.

88 Brownson, Works, v, 20 and 29.

84 See Brownson, Works, v, 162 ff., for his conversion to the Catholic
church; for his apologetical services in matters other than science, see ibid.,
VI, VII, VIN, passim.

35 See the files of the Boston Quarterly Review, 1838-1840, for explanations
of his political, social, and economic philosophy. These he continued in
Brownson’s Quarterly Review after 1844.

~ Pe oe

a

———— ED ee

EVOLUTION IN NEW ENGLAND 241

Brownson was unwilling to make any compromise whatever
with the doctrine of evolution. He even resented a reverent
attempt to reconcile it with Catholic theology.** After having
read Darwin’s volumes “ with some care,” he expressed sur-
prise that “a professed scientist could put forth such a mass
of unwarranted inductions and unfounded conjectures as
science.” Even as late as 1873, he still maintained that “ species
are immutable,” * and it was upon this ground that his specific
scientific objections were based. The leading members of the
scientific profession had already signified their willingness to
accept some form of transmutation, and even such stalwarts
as Professor Dana ** showed signs of relenting, but Brownson
clung to the dictum of the old biology that “ the specific type
remains always the same.” ** Wedded to such an interpreta-
tion of natural history, he could hardly sanction the hypothe-
sis that man had been evolved from lower forms, even had it
not conflicted with a theological predisposition.“ As Darwin
had failed, in Brownson’s estimation, to demonstrate the idea
of evolution at all, that part which had reference to man was
a non-sequitur with which he had no reason to be concerned.“

Of all the Catholic writers Brownson was the most prolific.
The pages of the Catholic World and his own Review are
filled with his trenchant criticisms of contemporary thought,
and if he was not the most brilliant, he elicited the most com-
ment from other thinkers.** He resisted every deduction which
was made from the theory of evolution and insisted that the

history of the human race illustrated retrogression rather than

86 For the attempt of Mivart to find authority for belief in a mediate crea-
tion, in the writings of St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and Suares, see Brownson,
Works, 1x, 496: “ True and False Science,” especially 523.

37 Brownson’s Quarterly Review: “ A Review of the Descent of Man,”
Works, 1x, 487. This review was written in July, 1873.

38 Loewenberg, “ Reaction of American Scientists to Darwinism,” 700.

89 Brownson, Works, 1x, 488.

40 Brownson, Works, 1x, 491.

#1 Brownson, Works, 1x, 488. He was concerned, nevertheless: see also 491
and 492.

42 For example, Octavius B. Frothingham, New England Transcendentalism
(New York, 1876) , 128 ff. .

242 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

progress. Progress occurred solely as the result of “ the super-
natural teaching . . . of Christianity” “ and nothing (there-
by meaning science and its teachings) “that conflicts with
Genesis or Christian tradition ” was, or could be, “ science.” “
In an era when scientists were worshipped as the apostles
of a new revelation, Brownson condemned them for having
violated the true canons of their calling. Achievement in
the physical sciences, especially as represented by Darwin and
Lyell, indicated to his mind a deterioration of method because
the ancient paths trodden by St. Thomas and the church
fathers had been forsaken.** He took occasion, therefore, to be-
labor those scientists of his own faith who had deserted Catho-
lic principles for the Baconian method. By doing so they had
lost “ all the advantages” of their “ superior theological sci-
ence.” With all the power at his command —and he was a
forceful and persuasive writer — he urged Catholics to study
science “ in the light of their own faith” in order that they
might “ conquer by superior science, the mastery of the scien-
tific world.” *

The Protestant contribution to the literature of denuncia-
tion was no less positive and vigorous. In the group who en-
tered the lists in this preliminary rebuttal was Herman
Lincoln, professor of ecclesiastical history at the Baptist Theo-
logical Institute at Newton, Massachusetts.*7 He was more the
scholar than the controversialist, although he had served an
apprenticeship as associate-editor of the Watchman and Re-
flector, a conservative weekly published at Boston. Like many
of his clerical fellows, he performed his greatest service in
repeating the objections already presented by Louis Agassiz
and other scientists in this country and abroad who were hos-
tile to Darwinism. These men were cited with evident ap-
proval and provided the confidence necessary to reject evolu-

43 Brownson, Works, 1x, 472: “ Primeval Man Not a Savage.”

44 Brownson, Works, x, 466-467.

45 Brownson, Works, 1x, 256.

46 Brownson, Works, m, 268.
47 Appletons’ Cyclopedia of American Biography.

' — i _>

EVOLUTION IN NEW ENGLAND 243

tion as a “ puerile” fancy.** Dr. Luther Tracy Townsend
rendered assistance of the same kind. As a member of the
theological faculty of the newly founded Boston University,
he enjoyed a considerable reputation for scholarship and
culture — particularly among his Methodist co-religionists —
a reputation greatly enhanced by his popularity as a writer of
religious works. One of his many volumes, entitled Credo,
devoted to “those inquiries which now agitate the thinking
world,” relegated Darwinism to a footnote, because “ there
was no evidence whatever in support of Mr. Darwin's
theory. . . .” The Mosaic account of creation remained
“upon an undisturbed basis,” ** but despite the scant cour-
tesy accorded Mr. Darwin’s theory and the finality with which
this proposition was asserted, the Mosaic account required
a labored defence to the extent of several hundred pages.

A much more consequential figure was Dr. Howard Crosby,
pastor of the Presbyterian Church and chancellor of New York
University. Member of a distinguished family, he was favor-
ably known to the public as one of the founders and later as
president of the society for the prevention of crime and
was not without a reputation in the world of letters. Before
assuming the chancellorship of the university he had been its
professor of Greek and was regarded with such favor that
Abraham Lincoln offered him a post as minister to Greece.*
Crosby wrote the introduction to the American edition of an
English work which excited favorable comment in this coun-
try largely because it was designed to adjust the damage
wrought to Christian philosophy by scientific thought.** Had
it not been for the general excitement which obtained in re-

ligious circles on the subject of evolution, it would be difficult

48 Baptist Quarterly, u (July, 1868) , 274: “ Development versus Creation.”

49 Townsend, Credo, 101, note.

50 The Dictionary of American Biography is the source of the biographical
information. See also Philip Schaff and Samuel M. Jackson, Editors, Encyclo-
pedia of Living Divines and Christian Workers (New York, 1887) .

51 John R. Leifchild, The Great Problem. The Higher Ministry of Nature
Viewed in the Light of Modern Science, as an Aid to an Advanced Christian
Philosophy (New York, 1872) .

244 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

to understand how a man of Crosby’s attainments could so
confound the issues as to identify Darwinian biology with
Greek materialism.”

One of the likeliest contestants for first honors and one of
the most influential of all such writers against evolution was
Enoch Fitch Burr, lecturer on the scientific evidences of
revealed religion, at Amherst. Graduated from Yale in 1839,
Burr returned there to spend two years in the study of
mathematics and physical astronomy. After an interruption
caused by the pressure of religious duties, Burr resumed
these studies for another four-year period of graduate work.
This interest in science and religion led to the preparation of
Ecce Coelum, or Parish Astronomy, which captivated re-
ligious leaders with an appreciation of apologetical literature
and led to his appointment as a lecturer at Amherst. En-
couraged by this success, he directed his efforts to the problems
of evolution, upon which he had been lecturing to his stu-
dents. The results of these lectures appeared in two substan-
tial volumes the titles of which reveal their spirit and purport.
The first, introduced to the public in 1870, bears the name
Pater Mundi; or Modern Science Testifying to the Heavenly
Father; the second, issued three years later as a continuation
of the former, was called Pater Mundi; or the Doctrine of
Evolution.*

At first Burr declared that the “ Law Scheme” did not
necessarily mean that there was no God but, if it were true,
natural theology would be deprived of the best means of
proving His existence. There appeared to be little danger of
this, however, for such demands were made upon Darwin's
hypothesis by way of evidence as to render them impossible
of fulfilment. Burr required that the assertions of science
be established axiomatically. Christian theism, in contra-

52 Leifchild, The Great Problem: “ Introduction.”

53 See an excellent account of the life of Burr in the Dictionary of American
Biography.

54 Enoch F. Burr, Ecce Coelum, or Parish Astronomy (Boston, 1867) .
55 Boston, 1870 and 1873.

ane

woe

EVOLUTION IN NEW ENGLAND 245

distinction to the looseness of evolutionary theories, was
“ credible a priori,” “ perfectly sufficient ” and “ suited best
to human convictions and traditions.” * Appletons’ Annual
Cyclopedia, in noticing the book, truly remarked that this
was an “ attempt to make science in its recent developments
serve the argument of Natural Theology” — a charge which
Burr would have been quite ready to acknowledge.”

In the Doctrine of Evolution the author reiterated his con-
tention that the establishment of the “ Law Scheme” would
do nothing to disprove divine existence. Nevertheless that
doctrine was “ extremely hostile to Theism and evangelical
religion generally.” Burr was convinced that the origin of
the evolutionary idea among the unorthodox Greeks was
more than coincidental and betrayed a subtle genetic con-
nection — the more so because those moderns who endorsed
it were “ widely astray in point of religious belief.” ** What-
ever toleration he had previously entertained for evolution he
now withdrew, for he had reached the conclusion that evolu-
tion and “ materialism ” differed merely in name. The theory
crowded God out of the universe and contradicted “ the whole
idea of a personal divine interference in the . . . world . . .
and so denies the chief use of having a God.” No theist, and
certainly no Christian believer, could accept a group of ideas
which had been “founded by atheism, claimed by atheism,
supported by atheism,” and “ used exclusively in the inter-
ests of atheism. . . .” ** Needless to add, Burr did not accept
them.

If the doctrine of Darwin was all that Burr asserted it was,
it could not be science. The critic was not slow to draw this
conclusion. Evolution did not even attain the rank of an
hypothesis but was “ only a speculation held by some scientific
men ” and by those “ who are no men of science at all.” © If
Burr knew nothing of Asa Gray, Joseph Le Conte, Alexander

56 Burr, Pater Mundi, 1, 65, 270, 269, and 266. See also 257, 258, and 276.
57 Burr, Pater Mundi, 1, vi.

58 Burr, Pater Mundi, u, 10.

59 Burr, Pater Mundi, u, 14 and 12. 60 Burr, Pater Mundi, ui, 27.

246 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Winchell, and a host of other scientists who were at once sin-
cere believers in theism and Christianity and yet advocates of
evolution, he was aware of the rejection of Agassiz, and this
sufficed to sustain his argument. Burr's attitude becomes
clearer if one studies his assertion that, should evolution
be established, the existence of God would be problematical,
“ but God must be if the scheme is false.” “ Every blow on this
one enemy is really a direct blow on behalf of God; all sound
objections that can be stated against the one are so many
positive proofs against the other.” Significantly enough, Burr
concluded: “ one can afford to expend himself [sic] liberally
in the effort to remove what is not merely the most noted,
plausible, influential . . . enemy of Theism in our day, but
what is the only positive enemy for all ages to come.” *

So well was Burr’s object accomplished that the Religious
Magazine and Monthly Review, relatively a temperate jour-
nal, hailed his work as a complete demolition of evolution
“from the standpoint of science” and confessed that there
was now no reason for the apprehension they had previously
supposed. “ He not only knocks the breath of life out of the
theory,” exulted this reviewer, “ but chops it in pieces and
throws it to the dogs.” * By his local parishioners in Lyme,
Connecticut, Burr was regarded as a mighty defender of the
old truths and when, at the age of fifty-seven, he tendered his
resignation, they refused to accept it.

Charles Hodge, professor of systematic theology at Prince-
ton, was another important member of the class to which Burr
belonged. Hodge, a sturdy Presbyterian of the old school,
was graduated from the same institution he later served. He
was too firmly grounded in the traditions of his church and
too imbued with the correctness of Scotch realism to be
endangered by new departures in speculative thought. His
unflinching loyalty to the doctrines of his youth is fully ex-

61 Burr, Pater Mundi, u, 27, 20, and 21.
62 Religious Magazine and Monthly Review, xu1x (May, 1873) , 492.
63 Dictionary of American Biography.

EVOLUTION IN NEW ENGLAND 247

emplified in his ponderous opus on systematic theology in
which he re-stated the ancient dogmas of Presbyterianism
with almost complete imperviousness to the struggle which
echoed about him.* Darwinism was denounced as “ thor-
oughly atheistic,” and although Darwin himself was absolved
of any atheistic intent, Hodge insisted that God had revealed
His existence so clearly that systems which presumed to con-
tradict it were like “ cobwebs in the track of a tornado.” *
Hodge was the author, also, of a small but very popular book
which contained little that he had not already printed in the
work on systematic theology. Not unlike Burr, Hodge reached
the conclusion that “ the denial of design in nature is virtually
a denial of God,” * by which, it need hardly be added, he
meant the design of Paley and Butler and not the higher
teleology of modern theologians. He pronounced what he
doubtless thought was the moderate appraisal that “a more
absolutely incredible theory was never propounded for accept-
ance among men.” *

Hodge could not welcome a system of evolution which made
directive agency unnecessary but he did perceive the possi-
bility of a theistic interpretation. During the discussion of the
subject at a meeting of the evangelical alliance in 1873 he
expressed the same misgivings but remarked further that
the line of demarcation between Christians and atheists could
be determined only by the answer to the question as to

whether the process was a conscious one directed by God

64 Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (New York, 1871-1873) .

65 Hodge, Systematic Theology, ui, 15.

66 Charles Hodge, What is Darwinism? (New York, 1874) , 173-

67 Hodge, What is Darwinism? 144; Popular Science Monthly, v (June,
1874), 246; see especially the review by Asa Gray, “ What is Darwinism,”
Nation, xvmt (May 28, 1874), 348, in which Gray asserts that Darwin was a
theist with “ thoroughly orthodox fundamental conceptions,” a fact which, so
far as Hodge was concerned, was not in dispute but was not strictly true. See
Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (New York, 1887) , 1, 284, 275 and 274; U,
105; also Hodge’s criticism of Gray’s defence of Darwin: Systematic Theology,
1, 18, 19 ff., and What is Darwinism? passim. Among the many reviews which
this latter volume evoked, see Levermore, “ What is Darwinism,” which was
commendatory and particularly informative.

248 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

or “a blind process of unintelligible unconscious force.” Had
this, and not the belief that Darwinism must logically end
in atheism, been the spirit of his criticism, he would have
been well on the road to a happy adjustment.

The objections of Hodge were recited by his colleague,
John T. Duffield, who, in addition to being a licensed preacher
of the Presbyterian church, was professor of mathematics at
the New Jersey institution. Duffield subscribed to the opinion
of Dr. Burr that the historical origin of the concept of evolu-
tion was not without significance and chided those who re-
garded it as a scientific matter — as many were then urging —
with which religion had no concern.* He was somewhat less
temperate than his associate, but otherwise there is little to
choose between them. In an article appearing in the Prince-
ton Review for 1878, he asserted that if there were any dis-
parity between the new doctrine and the Biblical account of
creation, it was the former which must be abandoned at once.
Evolution could not be regarded as an open question, for
“ then none can assert with confidence ” what the Bible taught
“on any subject.” He argued that it should be clear to Bibli-
cal students that regardless of its authority in these special
matters it taught “ important truths concerning spiritual and
divine things . . .” about which no doubt could be permitted.
It was with these dicta that the philosophy of evolutionism was
in such grave disagreement. The possibility that sufficient
evidence might be adduced to prove an organic kinship be-
tween man and the animal kingdom he dismissed with de-
rision, “ science can never prove that which is not true and
there is little interest and no profit in speculating as to the
possible conclusions which may be drawn from an impossible
premise.” *°

68 P. Schaff and S. I. Prime, Editors, History, Essays, Orations and Other
Documents of the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, Held in New
York, October 2-12, 1873 (New York, 1874) , 318, 319, and 320.

6 Princeton Review, 1 (January, 1878) , New Series, 150: John T. Duffield,
“ Evolutionism, Respecting Man and the Bible.”

7° Duffield, “ Evolutionism,” 160, 150, 161, 175, and 176.

Te? Fr om sr #

s

EVOLUTION IN NEW ENGLAND 249

The injury to the cause of true religion by such outbursts
is incalculable. By asserting that “ evolutionism and the scrip-
ture account of the origin of man are irreconcilable,” ™ Duf-
field made the final acceptance of science more difficult. The
positiveness with which these utterances were delivered in-
duced the belief that one could not accept the teachings of
science and still remain faithful to the precepts of religion.

Such sentiments were expressed by no less a person than
Tayler Lewis, an illustrious member of the Presbyterian faith
and like Chancellor Crosby a student of the classical lan-
guages. In addition to his fame as a classicist Professor Lewis
was favorably known to readers of theological literature.
These readers remembered his fervid espousal of the literal
interpretation of the Bible in the early skirmish with evolu-
tionary geology, a discussion which he later continued with
Professor Dana in the pages of the Bibliotheca Sacra.” If such
a record rendered him less acceptable to the rising school of
liberal theologians, it by no means detracted from his influ-
ence among the majority whose opinions he voiced. Learned
men throughout the literate world, even when unable to
approve of Darwin’s views, were united in their praise of
his industry, but Lewis objected to the “ sweeping generali-
zations’ made from “a few observations ” * which assumed
to dethrone the belief in permanence of type. With respect
to the effect of evolution on theology he virtually closed the
door of all future compromise by pronouncing them to be
absolutely at variance. “ Between Darwinism and Biblical
truth,” he wrote, “ there is a polar opposition.” Adam and
Christianity must stand or fall together, and to sever that
unity would “ make havoc of the whole Bible,” a havoc which

no “ exegetical or theological device ” could repair.”

71 Duffield, “ Evolutionism,” 156.

72 Loewenberg, “ Reaction of American Scientists to Darwinism,” 698, note
46.

73 Ranson B. Welsh, Faith and Modern Thought (New York, 1876), to
which Lewis wrote the introduction, xxv.

7 Cited by Duffield, in “ Evolutionism,” 173 and 174.

250 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Of similar import was the contribution of President Asa
Mahan of Adrian College, Michigan. He not only made the
issue one between theism and anti-theism but accused the
latter group of having employed the development theory as an
intellectual weapon in all the stages of history. In the manner
of all untrained commentators on the doctrine of evolution,
Mahan demanded indisputable proof before it could be en-
titled to a dispassionate hearing. So little did he understand
the principle of natural selection that he summarized it as
development “ by domestication and other causes, from some
one original form ” by which “the grape may be developed
into an apple tree.” He marvelled at the “ singular fatuity ”
which led men to adopt such a view of the world and prophe-
sied that “long before the year 1g00 . . . the great unbe-
lievers of the present era . . .” will “ be known only as the
bewildered sophists of the nineteenth century.” **

Dr. Benjamin F. Teft, a Methodist Episcopal minister, had
some extended observations to make upon the Darwinian
theory. Although he had served as a minor diplomatic official
and had occupied the presidency of several denominational
institutions, his reactions do not differ from those of his pred-
ecessors. With them he agreed that evolution was “a scheme
essentially atheistic.” He acknowledged, perhaps to condone
the ingenuousness of its proponents, that the Origin of Species
was so cleverly presented that its arguments “ fanciful as they
really were” had the “force of logical conclusions.” The
Descent of Man, “ the last step in this dream of imagination,”
fared no better in his hands and suffered from the same de-
fects as the other less objectionable portions of the theory.
There had been no evidence advanced to sustain such a radical
departure from established convictions and “ no person has
ever given us, or can give, one case in point.” **

75 Asa Mahan, Ingham Lectures. A Course of Lectures on the Evidences of
Natural and Revealed Religion (Cleveland, 1872) : “ Theism and Anti-Theism
in their Relations to Science,” 133, 131, and 111.

7 Benjamin F. Teft, Evolution and Christianity (Boston and New York,
1885) , 6, 52, and 53. This book was written many years before it was published.

EVOLUTION IN NEW ENGLAND 251

Nothing indicates the misapprehension of these writers
more clearly than the persistent demands for the “ missing
link.” It was not the lack of a graduated paleontological
series, the absence of which had been adequately explained
by the imperfections of the geological record, but it was evi-
dence of a new species which was demanded. Thus, Mahan
had complained that Darwin had “ not adduced a solitary fact
indicating in the least degree that any one species has ever
been or can be developed from another . . .”* which was
a difficulty noted by Brownson and Burr as well. Teft com-
mitted the same error, and the title of his work, as well as its
spirit, tended to widen the breach between the contending
parties. Evolution, he concluded, was not only “ absurd but
impossible, while Christianity stands upon proofs which no
man of ordinary intelligence and candor can reject.” *

The ablest presentation of the fundamentalist case in this
period was made by Dr. Randolph S. Foster, president of
Drew Theological Seminary. He was no more inclined toward
Darwinism than most of the writers already discussed; indeed
he rejected it “as entirely at variance with all known facts,”
but he was immediately aware of the truth that religion was
not fatally imperilled as a result. In short, he recognized that
evolution was not “ essentially atheistic,” which, in the final
analysis, is the differentiating feature between fundamental-
ists and all other classes who took part in the debate. Foster
delivered three addresses at Ohio Wesleyan University in
1872, made possible by a grant created to defend “ the evi-
dences of natural and revealed religion ” from the onslaughts
of infidelity. The first lecture was devoted to an exposition of
the influence of scholarship upon the idea of cause. The cen-
tral thesis of this lecture was the statement that the “ Bible is
either the most . . . astounding fraud that has ever gained
currency among men” or “ the most momentous system of
verities that has . . . appeared upon earth.” It was upon

77 Mahan, Ingham Lectures, 132, 133, and references previously cited.
78 Teft, Evolution and Christianity, 240 and 239.

252 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

this issue alone that the entire controversy revolved, for
“ demonstrate the Bible to be false in its postulate and . . .
the debate is closed.”

Foster made no bold claims for the veracity of Biblical
minutiz and did not mean what most fundamentalists im-
plied by similar statements. By the “ postulate” of the Bible
he simply meant cause. He depicted the history of scientific
progress in glowing language, dwelling with eloquence on its
victories and with tolerance on its failures and finally deduced
the moral that “ we must find help ab extra.” ® For the pur-
poses of argument, at least, Foster was willing to allow science
its full sweep, granting every accredited principle, considering
every tenable theory as “ nothing is more settled or scientifi-
cally certain than that the world began.” As to this beginning,
science offered no adequate explanation. In fact, after examin-
ing every speculation then before the world he submitted the
statement that none beside the theory of absolute creation was
sufficient. The postulate of the Bible, then, remained undis-
turbed. Neither Darwin’s natural selection nor Huxley’s pro-
toplasm had necessitated any revision of its premise and “ to
pretend the contrary is unscrupulous audacity or unaccount-
able dullness.” *

Having demonstrated the validity of cause, Foster then
began a rigid scrutiny of Huxley's attempt to solve the mystery
of life’s origin. The keen philosophical analysis of biological
theory and fact by which Huxley had deduced the protoplas-
mic hypothesis became, in Foster’s hands, nothing more than
a separation of its component chemical parts. Science, he
argued, might reveal its contents to be hydrogen, nitrogen,
oxygen, and carbon and denominate it protoplasm but it failed
to indicate how these “ living beings got their first protoplas-
mic capital.” There was no escape from the “ fundamental

7® Quotations from Foster will be found in Randolph S. Foster, Ingham
Lectures, “ The Origin of Species: An Examination of Darwinism,” 79, 3, 20,
and 25.

80 Foster, Ingham Lectures, 79 and 27.

EVOLUTION IN NEW ENGLAND 253

postulate.” “ The solution is not touched, and we hesitate not
to say, never can be, until we go behind matter ” and seek the
true cause.**

Foster was now prepared to investigate Darwinism. Inas-
much as he had shown that it was possible to vindicate “ natu-
ral and revealed religion ” even if the most radical of scientific
doctrines were accepted, he could approach the subject with
more or less equanimity. This examination yielded the result
that there were at least three types of evolution: the material-
istic, the semi-materialistic, and the theistic, which, if broadly
constructed, might be Christian. The chances of survival even
for this last view were very doubtful. Belief in evolution was
“ already receding ” — so swiftly, in fact, that Foster believed
his selection of a few well-chosen bibliographical references
would soon be of service to antiquarians and the curious.”

If it were possible for some form of development to be theis-
tic, that form was not the Darwinian. The best that he could
say for that kind of evolution was that it was “ theistic in its
origins, but atheistic in its evolutions.” Darwin had not in-
tended to propound a system of atheism but somehow he had
done so in spite of his reverent attitude. Although Darwin
had judiciously refrained from discussing final causes and had
even conceded that the original life force had been breathed
into a few primordial forms by the Creator, the process of
development was thereafter left “to work out such forms as
might come from the blind operation of an unguided force.”
This, as had already been said by many others, was “ undis-
guised atheism ” if for no other reason than that it left no
room for intelligent will.** Foster laid down his pen satisfied
that he had vindicated his belief beyond all peradventure.
For many who turned to this volume he had doubtless done
so, and at least one reader, having completed its study, gave

81 Foster, Ingham Lectures, “ The Origin of Life: An Examination of Hux-
ley,” 65, and 66.

82 Foster, “ Darwinism,” 75 and 106 note.

83 Foster, “ Darwinism,” 76 and 77.

254 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

thanks for his effort and wrote in the margin of the text, “ This
is a great writer. Pity he is not better known and more widely
read.”

The arguments advanced against the concept of evolution
during the period of rejection were largely of a theological or
Biblical origin. Among those based upon the interpretation
of Genesis, the most frequently presented was that the flexi-
bility of language in the Holy Word rendered any discovery
ultimately reconcilable with it.** The Biblical record was
transmitted to man when in intellectual infancy and, by intent
rather than inadvertency, was couched in the simplest pos-
sible terms. It would have been futile to include any recon-
dite physical theories and thereby befog the primitive minds
of those to whom the Bible was directed. If the account in
Genesis was now too simple for highly developed understand-
ings, it by no means invalidated the contention that it con-
tained the kernel of truth. The immortal words, “ In the be-
ginning” opened up indefinite vistas of time, completely
unrestricted as to commencement or end, which rendered the
legendary story of creation compatible with evolution. The
word “day” became the subject of long study by expert
Hebraists and was found to contain many hidden meanings.
The Bible, moreover, was given to man as a rule of conduct
and a guide to faith — not as a scientific encyclopedia.** One

84 Bibliotheca Sacra, xxxtv (October, 1877), 675-676: J. H. Mcllvaine,
“ The Moral Difficulties of the Old Testament ”; in general, see T. G. Stewart,
Genesis Re-Read; or the Latest Conclusions of Physical Science, Viewed in
Relation to the Mosaic Record (Philadelphia, 1885); Arnold Guyot, Crea-
tion or Biblical Cosmology in the Light of Modern Science (New York, 1884) ;
William North Rice, “ Genesis and Geology,” in his Twenty-Five Years of
Scientific Progress (Boston and New York, 1894), 129.

85 Bibliotheca Sacra, 11 (January, 1894) , 159: S. B. Goodenow, “ Primeval
Man ”; for the word “ day” see Guyot, Creation, chapter vu; and a review of
that volume by James Dwight Dana, Bibliotheca Sacra, xu1 (April, 1885) , 201.
But note that all did not approve of such a reconciliation: “ We believe that it
means literal and natural days” — Herbert W. Morris, Work Days of God; or
Science and the Bible (Philadelphia, 1877) , 184.

86 Charles B. Warring, Genesis I and its Critics. Miracle, Law and Evolu-
tion (New York, 1887), 8; R. Milligan, Reason and Revelation (Cincinnati,
1871) ; George Frederick Wright, Studies in Science and Religion (Andover,

EVOLUTION IN NEW ENGLAND 255

was hardly justified in seeking the explanation of natural
laws in a work of religion and morals. Nor was it to be inferred
that the inspired writers were ignorant of the solution of cos-
mic problems merely because they had been omitted. Doubt-
ers were cautioned to remember that the divine amanuenses
were limited in the matter of selection and were forced to
choose only the more important material. If the Bible, there-
fore, yielded nothing but a deep silence and profound am-
biguity as to the questions which agitated the modern world,
here was at least an explanation.

A large proportion of the religiously minded public were
impressed by these arguments. The Biblical rendition of the
origin of the world apparently did not deny an evolutionary
development but confirmed it. If Darwin had annihilated
time, so had the Old Testament exegesists. Science was far
less satisfying in its interpretation of primary origins than
the Bible, which was in complete agreement with modern
ideas. Whatever slight discrepancies existed were easily ad-
justed by reasonable explanations, and the simplicity of these
explanations was greatly in their favor. They did not demand
the mental gymnastics which the hypotheses of science re-
quired. They appealed to the common sense. Nor did they
violate the canons of common sense by ascribing man’s origin
to monkeys.

By far the strongest argument was that directed against the
scientific method, which, although of a philosophical nature,
was cast in a theological mould. This was the re-assertion of
the classical dualism between the intuitive and empirical
faculties which found expression in the statement that there
were two fields, controlled respectively by science and religion,
neither of which could be invaded by the other without a
change of methodological approach. The noble lineage of this
concept, the most distinguished modern disciple of which was

Massachusetts, 1882), 251, 357, 360, and 368. It is somewhat difficult to see
why it was thought necessary to make the Bible conform to modern discovery
if it was thought to have no authority in scientific matters.

256 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Immanuel Kant, need not be recounted here. It appeared in
many interesting variations during this initial period but its
doom was already outlined in the march of science. The sequel
to this preliminary debate was to establish the doctrine of
evolution beyond any reasonable doubt. Its consort, natu-
ral law, was to destroy, at least temporarily, the tenuous
distinction between nature and supernature.

The publication of Darwin's work initiated a general con-
flict which few literate people could evade. It was more than
a debate over the correctness of a certain scientific hypothesis
which engaged the attention of specialists in natural history;
it was more than the reaction of timid theologians to a hostile
speculation. It became the centre of a conflict between the
progressive and conservative elements of American society.
The fulminations of certain of the theological fraternity
gradually forced the question of transmutation into the back-
ground in the presence of the graver issue of intellectual toler-
ance. The boastful certitude of the odium scientificum, on the
other hand, made every religious-minded person an eager par-
ticipant. A science which relegated affairs of the spirit to the
limbo of myth and fable challenged these latter individuals
just as a religion which stifled nascent learning provoked oppo-
sition from those who feared for the freedom of thought.

People of the twentieth century, relatively uninhibited by
theological prepossessions, are in danger of minimizing the
emotional struggle which occurred in the latter half of the
past century. Men were pursued by the spectre of doubt
which obscured every principle of certainty. They felt a chill-
ing loneliness in the infinities of time and space which the
discoveries of science unfolded. They sought the consoling

glow of assurance which constantly impelled them to greater

effort, only to elude them at the end. Learned treatises were
written setting forth the arguments for divine existence and
the credibility of theological systems if only that the author’s
belief might be confirmed in the process. Spiritual suicides
attested the prevailing chaos. Rational Unitarians sought

i

el
ad

EVOLUTION IN NEW ENGLAND ( 257

refuge in the glamour of Episcopal symbolism, and men with
a wealthy lineage of anti-Catholicism bowed to the authority
of Rome. Cultured scholars of scientific tastes looked to
spiritualism for the solution of life’s mysteries, and the new
faith called Christian Science attracted many to whom the
name alone afforded shelter.

In volumes which a secular era has relegated to obscurity
much of the spirit of the nineteenth century is still to be found.
Even the phraseology, which has become strange in less than
a hundred years, can not hide the hopes and fears of these
desperately earnest men. One can find in these volumes
rationalizations unworthy of a sophomoric intelligence, argu-
ments conceived in utter defiance of logic, superstitions more
reasonable in an African tribesman than a nineteenth-century

American. But there, also, are to be found the mainsprings of
human action.

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS

AN HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE
TO CARDINAL O’CONNELL’S RECOLLECTIONS

FRANCIS A. CHRISTIE

OR a lifetime I have rejoiced in the fact that I was born in

Lowell to share the cultural advantages richly offered there
to my boyhood years. I have been happy, also, to remember how
justly it was said by a local historian that in the public schools of
Lowell “ the children of Protestants and Catholics sat side by side
scarcely conscious of any religious difference.” It is, therefore, with
pain and amazement that in Cardinal O’Connell’s Recollections
of Seventy Years I find a distressing account of bigotry and perse-
cution endured by Catholic pupils in Lowell schools.

The cardinal’s memory and mine go back to the same time. He
entered the Lowell High School a year later than myself. But our
recollections are not the same. For instance, the cardinal states
that “there were no Catholic teachers in the public schools of
Lowell then nor for many years afterwards was a Catholic allowed
to teach in them.” He should be gently reminded that in 1873, the
very year in which he entered the high school, a Catholic assistant
teacher was promoted to the headship of the Mann Grammar
School and was soon succeeded by a Catholic graduate of Holy
Cross College, who, in 1884, became the superintendent of the
schools of Lowell. This reminder can be extended by recalling, as
all our local historians do, that the employment of Catholic teach-
ers began in 1836, ten years after Lowell was incorporated and a
quarter of a century before the cardinal’s birth.

To understand the significance of this we must, however, turn
to another of the cardinal’s statements. Referring to the influx
of Irish immigrants after 1846 into New England generally, he
writes, “ They were herded in a quarter of the town and told to
stay there, like the Jews in the Ghetto; and these outer portions
of the villages were designated Dublin or Cork in derision.”
Doubtless residents of other towns or villages have shuddered on
reading this, but, most of all, citizens of Lowell, on finding that
it was understood to apply particularly to the cardinal’s birth-
place. Where, they ask, was the “ Ghetto ” to which the Irish were

258

~ ee

it
ir
y
ie

h-

1X
he

ns
on
iat
th-

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 259

restricted? When it is suggested that he is thinking of “ the Acre,”
where, to be sure, “ Dublin or Cork ” designations were once used,
the tension is relaxed. It would seem that the cardinal’s expres-
sion is due to an inaccurate recollection of a passage, more ami-
able in temper, in the estimable John F. McEvoy’s remarks at the
semi-centennial of Lowell, in 1876, when the cardinal was a senior
in the high school. What, then, was “ the Acre” ? The real story
of it does not suggest a “ Ghetto.”

The scene is the farming village of East Chelmsford, where the
Merrimack Corporation, incorporated February 5, 1822, had ac-
quired land for mills as well as for housing the expected em-
ployees. The mills and the homes were not yet ready. The canal
that would furnish water power was not yet dug. On the sixth of
April, 1822, there arrived on foot, from Charlestown, a group of
thirty Irishmen, asking for work, and that very day they were set
to do the first work in digging the canal. But how, in this thinly
populated village, could they be housed? These sturdy laborers
solved the problem for themselves by simply camping in tents or
hastily built shacks on an open common running west from the
Suffolk Canal to what is now Pawtucket Street. The legal title to
some of this land was disputed and, owing to this, plans are found
in the East Cambridge registry of deeds showing lanes designated
“Dublin Street ” or “ Cork Street.” Must we suppose that these
names were imposed by derisive Yankees? Were they not rather
due to the settlers’ fond remembrance of older scenes?

If the pioncer thirty pre-empted only an acre, “ the Acre” grew
to vague dimensions for, on the rumor of jobs, more Irish folk
came and naturally settled near their kin. Nobody “ herded them.”
Very soon a priest from Salem came periodically to celebrate mass.
If the first celebration is correctly dated by our learned historian,
F. W. Coburn, as occurring in 1822, that would be the first reli-
gious service in East Chelmsford since John Eliot preached to
his Indian converts, for the farmers and taverners worshipped, as
yet, in Chelmsford Centre or in Dracut, across the Merrimack
River. For a time, mass was said in a school-room loaned for the
purpose. By 1827, the priest reported to Bishop Fenwick a Catho-
lic population of twenty-one families and thirty unmarried men.
By 180, the group numbered about four hundred, and then Kirk
Boott, manager of the Merrimack Corporation, made them a gift

260 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

of land for a church. Thus, on July 3, 1831, St. Patrick’s Church
was dedicated on a street named Fenwick Street, in honor of the
bishop. “ The Acre ” was steadily improved, but it is clear that all
the Catholics did not “ stay there,” for in ten years another large
church had to be built for them a good mile away.

Not only was there this rapid dispersion of Catholic immigrants,
but they were not in exclusive possession of “ the Acre” where
they first settled. Suffolk Street certainly belonged to “ the Acre,”
and on that street, in close proximity to St. Patrick’s Church, two
Protestant churches were organized, a Baptist and a Methodist,
in the year in which St. Patrick’s was built, and soon after that a
third was added by the Christian Connection. It is difficult to
suppose that there was bigotry and persecution in that neighbor-
hood. To be a Baptist then was to be a champion of religious lib-
erty, and the “ Christians ” were disciples of Abner Jones, whose
verified creed ends with the stanza:

My fellowship in Christ is bound

To all those souls where love is found
Of every order, sect, and name —

In Christ I count them all the same.

To be sure, the Baptists in 1837 sold their good brick church on
Suffolk Street to the poorly housed Methodist neighbor society,
but they moved only two blocks away, to Worthen Street. The
Methodists, also, in 1846, followed them to Worthen Street, and
the brick church became St. Mary’s Catholic, and eventually the
parochial school of St. Patrick’s. Worthen Street was certainly not
thought of as a part of “ the Acre,” but Dummer Street, the par-
allel between Worthen and Suffolk, might have been so consid-
ered. But Dummer Street housed many Scotch Presbyterian fami-
lies. The “ Ghetto” was not much of a “ Ghetto,” after all.

The story of “the Acre” has close relation to the subject of
Catholic teachers in the public schools. East Chelmsford, to begin
with, had two school-houses, but the coming of the mills made it
necessary for the Merrimack Corporation to provide another. A
school building with an upper half for religious meetings was
ready on March 6, 1824, and on the next day worship was con-
ducted there by the Reverend Theodore Edson, who was engaged
by the company to perform pastoral duty to such persons in their
employ “as might desire it.” Until March 1, 1826, when East

——

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 261

Chelmsford was incorporated as the town of Lowell, he super-
vised this school, but thereafter he was the leader in planning the
whole school system and in welcoming every alien arrival with
Christian kindness. The rector of St. Anne’s was popularly called
“ Father Edson.” From the outset, this benignant soul had sought
to draw the Irish children into the existing schools, which num-
bered five after the incorporation of the town. This failing, phil-
anthropic individuals rented a place on “ the Acre ” where a man
who had taught in Ireland and was approved by the priest gave
instruction for small fees paid by the parents. As this was not a
success, the town, in 1830, contributed as much as was paid to each
district school.

In April, 1831, on the advice of a committee consisting of Rev-
erend Theodore Edson (Episcopalian) , Reverend E. W. Freeman
(Baptist), Reverend Eliphalet Case (Universalist), Dr. Elisha
Bartlett, and Josiah Crosby, the town decided “ that the Irish
population living on the Acre so called be formed into a district
to be called District Number 7. That such Irish families not liv-
ing within the above limits who, in the opinion of the Superin-
tending School Committee, are conveniently situated, may send
to the School in District Number 7.” However, the school com-
mittee, in 1836, had to acknowledge the failure of this attempt to
win these children to the public schools, chiefly because of “a
natural apprehension on the part of parents and pastors of plac-
ing their children under Protestant teachers, and, in a measure
also by the mutual prejudice and consequent disagreement among
the Protestant and Catholic children themselves.” Therefore, with
the codperation of Father Connoly, the school board in this year,
1836, authorized special schools for Catholic children, under super-
vision of the board, but the teachers, it was stipulated, must be of
the Roman Catholic faith, and the text-books must contain no
statement of facts not admitted by that faith or any remarks re-
flecting injuriously upon their system of belief.

Two Irish Catholic schools were at once provided, one at St.
Patrick’s, the other on Church Street. From that time on, the re-
ports of the school committee are enthusiastic about the success of
this system. It was a pleasure for them to report, in 1838, that “a
general interest is manifested in the prosperous condition of our
Irish schools. They now consist of two Grammar and three Pri-

262 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

mary schools, kept by four male and two female teachers.” “ Irish
pupils are not excluded from the other public schools to which
convenience of location and requisite attainments may entitle
them to be admitted. They have access to the High School on equal
conditions with others and more or less may be found in the vari-
ous schools of every rank in the city.” I have underscored these
last words, because they show that Catholic families were, even
so early, losing their fear of Protestant teachers. The separate
Catholic public schools diminished in number, especially after
1852, when the first Catholic parochial school was opened owing
to the general policy of the Catholic church.

This story should modify the charge of bigotry and lack of sym-
pathy with Catholic children. One is not surprised to find in
Lowell as it was and as it is, written in 1845 by the Unitarian
pastor, Reverend Henry Miles, the statement that “ few are the
places which, on the whole, are more exempt from bigotry, intol-
erance, and the little arts of persecution and censoriousness, so
often suggested by sectarian zeal.” When Charles Chase, the splen-
did principal of the high school in the cardinal’s time, said that
“ the children of Protestants and Catholics sat side by side scarcely
conscious of any religious difference,” he counted this as due to
the notable and generous policy of 1836, owing to the elevated
spirit of the Reverend Theodore Edson.

But the cardinal has no recollections of this.

THOREAU'’S OPINION OF WHITMAN
VIOLA C. WHITE

E Abernethy collection in the Middlebury College Library
contains a sheet scrawled over in pencil with the poet-
naturalist’s abominable hand-writing, and signed “In haste
H. D. T.” Where the other half of this roughly jotted letter may
be, if it still exists, is not known. The fragment begins, “ A re-
markably strong though coarse nature,” and with scrawls and
interlinings proceeds to present Thoreau’s travailling progress
toward expressing to his friend, Harrison Blake, his view of Walt

_

am F< ©

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 263

Whitman.’ This badly written fragment is of interest for three
reasons — first, as showing that Henry Thoreau, like ourselves,
made a preliminary rough draft of a letter when subject-matter
was difficult to express, and that he, too, with innocent duplicity,
was capable of signing the labored product “ In haste,” in order
to make it sound spontaneous. In the second place, this fragment,
with its halts and emendations, bears mute evidence of the fact
that Thoreau found Whitman an important but a difficult phe-
nomenon. In the third place, the variations between this scribbled
sheet and the reproduction of it in Emerson’s edition of Thoreau’s
correspondence may well be more important than they seem at
first glance. The sentence in the fragment which is not to be found
in Emerson's version, that referring to “ the printing of Es letter,”
seems to concern the much discussed matter of Whitman’s use of
Emerson’s commendatory letter when he published the revised edi-
tion of his poems. Whether Thoreau omitted the sentence in the
letter which he finally sent off to Harrison Blake, or whether
Emerson diplomatically removed it, when editing the correspond-
ence, is not known.” The fact remains that the fragment contains
it, and the letter, as published, does not.

[He is manne * A remarkably strong [but cancelled] though
coarse nature — of a sweet disposition and much prized by his
friends — Though peculiar and rough in his exterior [his skin (all
over) red inserted] he is essentially a gentleman — I am still some-
what in a quandary about him — feel that he is essentially strange
to me at any rate — but I am surprised by the sight of him — He is
very broad — but [I think cancelled] as I have said not fine. IN His
APOLOGIZING ACCOUNT OF THE MATTER HE MADE THE PRINTING OF
Es LETTER SEEM A SIMPLE THING — AND TO SOME EXTENT THROWS THE
BURDEN OF IT — IF THERE IS ANY, ON THE WRITER. [He said that I mis-
apprehended him. I am not quite sure that I do inserted above the
line.] [He says cancelled] says (He told us) he Loves (loved) to ride

1 The later draft of this character sketch which Thoreau managed to work
out and send is headed “Concord, November 19, 1856,” and addressed to
“Mr. Blake.” See Letters to Various Persons, by Henry D. Thoreau, R. W.
Emerson, Editor, (Boston, 1865) , 142.

2 Emerson states, in his preface: “In some letters, passages have been
omitted on account of private or personal references.” It is possible, therefore,
that he removed this sentence because it referred to himself.

8 Words in parentheses, with the exception of “all over,” are found only
in Emerson's version of the letter; words in capitals and small capitals are
found only in the manuscript fragment. Ampersands have been printed as
“and.” .

264 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

up and down Broadway [and will und all day sitting beside
an omnibus driver — [all day cancelled] and listening to the roar of
the carts and sometimes [gesticulating and inserted] declaiming
Homer at the top of his voice (all day on an omnibus, sitting be-
side the driver, listening to the roar of the carts) . He has long been
an editor and writer for the newspapers — was editor of the N. O.
Crescent — but now has no employment but to read and write in
the MorNING (forenoon) and walk in the sun like all the rest of
the scribbling cLass* (gentry) .
IN HASTE
H. D. T.

NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND ALMANACS
N. W. LOVELY

S early as 1683 Cotton Mather had turned his attention to
A converting the populace through the medium of an almanac,
asserting that “ such an anniversary composure comes into almost
as many hands as the best of books.” Nor did he hesitate to lavish
on his prose all the learning at his command. At moments he at-
tains a genuinely fine style.

Then will the Spark of Immortality now within my breast be
flown into a world of souls, and will be fixed down like a rock in
a state of weal, or a state of wo, for infinitely more then as many
millions of ages, as the Heaven hath Stars or the Shore sands, or
the huge Ocean drops of water in it.

The next year Benjamin Gillain published an almanac under the
title philonauticus, for records of tides and astronomical observa-
tions were in great demand among sailors and people living near
the sea.

Eighty years later the Ames almanac had attained a circulation
of sixty thousand copies. Although this almanac was admittedly
the best and by far the most popular, it was by no means the only
almanac published in New England at the time. There survive to
this day copies of almanacs annotated by divines, copies in which

4 The last word may be “ order.” It is certainly not “ gentry,” as Emerson
has it.

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 265

farmers noted when they planted their seed and made their hay,
other copies, still, that contain jottings by that humane Puritan,
Samuel Sewall. One, in particular, deserves attention. Published
by Mein & Fleeming, Boston book-sellers and printers, for the year
1772, it is a small, vest-pocket edition with interleavings designed
for use as a diary, and for a diary they were used — by whom is not
known. The author frequently rode horseback and was often hav-
ing his trousers “ reseated””; he preached in the pulpits of several
ministers; he had a room at Harvard College, and before that lived
in a private house in Cambridge; he bought rum and nutmegs
often; kept careful account of his expenses; was an apparently
important member of some unnamed organization; and, last but
not least, was a friend of John Adams. On the whole, it is safe to
say that everybody read almanacs — certainly the publishers did
all they could to make them universally necessary and entertain-
ing. As such, they are a valuable index to the temper and condi-
tions of colonial life.

In many ways it is regrettable that so much emphasis has been
placed on Benjamin Franklin as a maker of almanacs, because he
has come to be regarded as an exceptional man and as a conse-
quence his work in this field is often thought of as an isolated
phenomenon. Franklin was by no means the best almanac-maker
in America — Nathaniel Ames was that — nor was he the only al-
manac-maker who later rose to eminence in statecraft and govern-
ment. We can leave out Franklin completely and still find in our
list of almanac-makers — Hutchins, Sherman, Ames, Low, West,
etc. —a characteristic cross-section of the more enterprising and
better informed class of New England and the colonies in general.
On the other hand, if we keep this truth in mind, Franklin takes
on new significance — not as a man of genius but as a typical, or at
least, not a unique product of his times. He is the greatest man
who made almanacs—and yet he is not far ahead of Roger
Sherman.

Sherman came from a long line of respectable English clothiers;
he was a lineal descendant of Edmond Sherman and Anne
Cleave, who number among their descendants — Mary, wife of
the third Earl of Rosebery in England, and a great many Ameri-
can Shermans, including, among others, General William T.
Sherman and United States Senator John Sherman, of Ohio.

266 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Roger’s father, William Sherman, seems to have been a combina-
tion farmer and “ cordwainer.” Roger was born in 1721, and four
years later the family moved west from Newton to Punkapoag
Plantation, or what is now the north-eastern part of Stoughton,
where his father had acquired seventy-three acres from the In-
dians. There Roger lived until he was twenty-two years old. He
grew up under his worthy father’s guidance as a shoemaker and
farmer, with only such education as the country schools of that
time afforded and he could pick up for himself. Before the end
of his life this came to include proficiency in logic, geography,
history, mathematics, a bit of philosophy and theology, and a real
mastery of law and politics.

William Sherman was not a member of the church, nor was
Roger at the time of his father’s death, in 1741. The son admin-
istered the estate, joined the church in 1742, at the time of the
great awakening; and in 1743, according to tradition, walked to
New Milford, Connecticut, carrying the tools of his trade with
him. The wide range and remarkable financial success of his en-
terprises, the versatility of his public and ecclesiastical services
are too great to be listed in detail. Before he had been in New
Milford seven years he owned several hundred acres of land and
a residence for which he paid £2,000. In 1750 he was the only
merchant in the town. That year he brought out his first almanac,
which was published simultaneously in New York and New Eng-
land — like all the rest of the series. During the period immedi-
ately preceding the Revolution he even went further than did
Samuel and John Adams in denying the power of parliament to
make laws for the colonies; as might have been expected, he was
a member of the first continental congress. Later, with Franklin
and Jefferson, he made one of the committee which drew up and
signed the Declaration of Independence. He was a respected mem-
ber of the congress for Connecticut, serving on influential com-
mittees, particularly those which had to do with fiscal matters.

The important fact for our purposes, however, is that a man
who was at once a successful merchant and a person of consequence
enjoying the confidence of his fellow-citizens as an officer in both
church and state, a man of wide reading and unusual mental
power, should turn to the making of almanacs as a natural and
useful means of serving himself and his community. Two inci-

-_ —_— Fe

\-

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 267

dents in his life illuminate that of his time. Sherman married in
1749 and had seven children, two of whom died early; three sons
later served as officers in the revolutionary army. Two were edu-
cated at Yale. Mrs. Sherman died eleven years after her marriage,
at the age of thirty-four. Three years later Sherman married Re-
becca Prescott, of Massachusetts, and the story of their meeting
shows us the less harsh side of Puritanism. The widower was on
the point of leaving his brother after having visited with him for
three weeks. His host went with him a short way, and the two men
were sitting on their horses and making their farewells when a
pretty girl of eighteen rode by them. Mr. Sherman prolonged his
visit and eventually won the hand of this young lady, who became
one of the most beautiful and witty women of her age — even
though she bore eight children of her own and cared for the five
living children of her predecessor. It is well to remember that suc-
cessful men of affairs, and even austere churchmen, could change
their plans abruptly by virtue of a chance meeting with a pretty
young girl. Six years later we find him writing to his wife: “ This
is your birthday. Mine was goth of last month. May we so num-
ber our days as to apply our Hearts to wisdom: that is, True Reli-
gion. Psalm go. 12.”

The second incident has to do with almanacs. In making up the
almanac for 1750 Sherman was a little hurried and sent off the
astronomical cbservations and monthly tables to his New York
printer, De Foreest, with instructions to add whatever seemed ap-
propriate. By this he meant, of course, accounts of roads, court-
meetings, tables of money, and other similar matters. De Foreest
took him at his word, however, and interspersed through the al-
manac a deal of ribald and humorous material, which shocked
Mr. Sherman considerably:

January: —I find by the stars that the greatest disease incident

to this month is want of money, caused by the great consumption
of Wood, Candles, and Canary, three valuable things in this cold

Season . . . secondly, suspicious weather where the Master kisses
the Maid behind the door.
March: — . . . many of your Ambergrese Gallants, as brave

gentlemen as the Taylor can make them, shall go awooing to rich
heiresses.

June: — Saturn this month, in his Mulligrubs, causes some des-
peradoes to vomit out more oaths at one supper than would main-
tain a town or garrison in good swearing, a twelve-month round.

268 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

November: — Comfortable candles warm, jellies and a kind she
bed fellow, are three things very requisite all this month.

Winter: — . . . Nights are premontriposterous long; now is the
time for the tearing of sheets and begetting of bantlings.

But to conclude (as the Parson says, and that sometimes per-
haps before he hath half done) . . .

pring: — This quarter brings Shoals of Herrings, Green-Pease,
Cherries, Custards, etc., etc.

Autumn: — The Farmer's Barns are now full of wheat, and he
busy in sowing more for another Year, and all because wheat is so
excellent a grain for the making of Bag-puddings. This Quarter
produces store of Hazel-nuts, and raw Cyder, one of which spoileth
the teeth, the other causeth the Belly Ach.

All this is significant only because De Foreest would hardly have
included it for any reason other than the hope that it would in-
crease the popularity of the almanac. A publisher is always more
likely to pander to the public than is an author, even an author of
almanacs, and so this rather crude and heavy-handed humor helps
to remind us that Puritans were inclined to laugh on week-days,
and find fun in their every-day life. Here, also, is evidence that by
this time life was not unduly hard in the colonies; that there existed
a certain abundance, and an appreciation of the comforts of life.

Tulley, who made almanacs from 1687 to 1702, had the same
experience with one he published in Boston in 1688. If a pub-
lisher could think that such humor as is to be found in that
almanac would increase the sale of it, we must revise our conven-
tional notion of seventeenth-century Boston.’ That it was the pub-
lisher and not Tulley we have no direct evidence in this case, but
it sounds very much unlike Tulley’s other almanacs, and we know
from a statement in the issue for 1696 that his publisher did add
items of which Tulley did not approve. “ As for the late French
King’s Nativity, it was acted and put into my late almanac by the
printer, unknown to me, for which I am much displeased with him
for so doing.” ?

Perhaps the best cure for those people who confuse Puritanism
and Victorianism, however, is an acquaintance with the first and
second Drs. Nathaniel Ames, of Dedham, Massachusetts, who
compiled almanacs from 1726 to 1775. The second Nathaniel Ames

1 Tulley’s almanac for 1688 is in the Harvard College Library.
2 Massachusetts Historical Society.

- SS w

le

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 269

kept a diary also, which, along with the only complete file of his
almanacs, is now in the custody of the Dedham Historical Society.
Remembering Tulley, and many other minor almanacs with oc-
casional enlightening glimpses, we see in Dr. Nathaniel Ames, 2nd,
a confirmation of a growing suspicion that colonial New England
had much more in common with the heartiness of Elizabethan
England than with the priggishness of Victorian England. Young
men at Harvard, this diary shows us, were not so destitute of
dramatic entertainment as is often supposed.

June 22, 1758 —“ Roman Father ” play performed.

July 3, “ Cato” play performed.*

April 20, 1759 — “ Drummer” acted at Hows.

July 6. “ Revenge ” acted — father came.

September 7. “ Cato.”

November 23. “ Revenge.”

June 13, 1760 — Acted “ Tancred and Sigismunda” for which
we are like to be prosecuted. ;

November 12. 13. In evening acted a play — rebuked for it by
our parents.

November 20, 1764 — Scholars punished at College for acting
over the great and last day in a very shocking manner, personating
the Jude, etertat Devil, etc.

In 1764, after the death of his father, Nathaniel Ames, Jr., under-
took the composition of the almanacs. His address to the reader in
the issue for 1765, is straightforward and interesting:

I was induced to finish this almanack rather to please some in-
timate friends, who were urgent to have it continued by the same
Name than by the Prospect of the Reward, which is indeed very
small, or by any fondness for commencing author. I have been
very anxious to have it become as useful as possible to those whose
Oracle is an Almanack, such as are destitute of any other periodi-
cal performance, as magazines, or the like, or even Newspapers.

Ames was by nature a propagandist: he inveighed against to-
bacco and quack doctors; he opposed the stamp act, and aimed
to encourage local industry and self-sufficiency. But he always re-
membered that his almanacs were designed for a public of di-
verse interests. In 1766, verses on government figure in the entries
for January and February: “dear bought liberties,” “ Native

% Cato was performed twice again-during this month, on July 6 and 14.

270 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Freedom,” etc. — but for March and April Ames printed a little
lyric — not, perhaps, of much literary merit but designed, never-
theless, to appeal more through a quality of literary charm than
through any freshness or vigor of thought.

Lovely beauty, breathing spring,
Waiving soft thy balmy wing;
Fairest glory of the year!

On our longing —_ appear,
Sweet inspirer of my song!

On a sunbeam glide along!

See the lovely Nymph appears
And a crown of roses wears,
Now the husbandmen prepare
To improve the coming year;
Flinging free the generous grain,
Hoping pleasure, bearing pain.

Ames used also in his almanacs the “ Poor Richard” sort of
proverb which was common to all almanacs of the time; there were
also purely humorous observations more peculiar to the compiler:
“ While some are fighting about riches, Others strive who shall
wear the breeches.” — “ Keen nor-wester, Old maids doth pester.”
—“ A fine growing season — for horns.” The monthly verses for
the year 1771-1772 make up an apparently original poem by Dr.
Ames — a literary allegory in heroic couplets called Porsenna in
pursuit of the Kingdom of Felicity. This has passages of poetry
that is something more than adequate and a plot that is as inter-
esting as an allegory can be. The content, however, suggests the
age of Elizabeth rather than that of Queen Anne, although the
couplets are mostly of the end-stop variety.

But the fair princess of felicity,

Intreated me to make some short delay,

And asked by her, who could refuse to stay?
Close by the mount with fragrant shrubs o’er-grown
On a cool mossy couch she laid her down;

Her air, her posture, all conspired to please;
Her head upon her snowy arm at ease,

Reclined, a studied carelessness expressed;
Loose lay her robe, and naked heaved her breast,
Eager I flew to that delightful place

And poured a shower of kisses on her face.

wewrFre™

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 271

Now hovered over her neck, her breast, her arms,
Like bees o’er flowers, and tasted all her charms;
And then her lips and then her cheeks I tried,
And fauned and wantoned round on every side.

Evidently some colonial New Englanders were intellectually alert
people who read the best English poetry (they all quote the great
poets — Pope, Dryden, Prior, Thomson, Milton, Shakespeare — as
well as the English prose writers: Swift, Locke, and so forth) , men
and women who could, on occasion, write verse of a respectable
order and think sanely, if vigorously, on many subjects. Practically
all of them introduced popularized expositions of the scientific
theories of the time. Astronomy was, of course, a particular favor-
ite with them, but Lodowick and Ames interested themselves in
medicine, campaigning against quacks and advocating legal re-
strictions on the practitioners of medicine. They expounded
Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood, urged genuine
temperance, and described simple remedies for minor diseases. Al-
most universally they kept their tempers (at least in print) and
expressed themselves quietly, for it was to their interest to seek
admittance to as many homes as possible. From this point of view
the political propaganda to be found in these almanacs becomes
particularly significant.

What a people thought at a given time is always difficult to es-
tablish with any degree of certainty; it is probably rash to assume
that any people has ever done much thinking at any time. Every
one with even a passing knowledge of such things as early Ameri-
can furniture and pewter and silverware must realize that there
was, in colonial America, an important class of aristocratic and
wealthy citizens with fine taste in matters of craftsmanship and the
practical arts. Somewhat below these were the substantial and
hearty farmers. To such men as these the almanacs seem to have
been addressed primarily. They formed in many ways the most im-
portant class, and any revolution which hoped to be successful
would have to rely upon their support.

Very early almanac-makers showed an inclination to think
about political matters. In 1648, Danforth — who was connected
with Harvard—wrote for his almanac an allegorical poem
wherein New England appears as a tree:

272 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Which yearly shoots forth Laws and Libertyes
That no man’s will or wit may tyranize.

These seventeenth-century writers revealed a tendency to praise
liberty and denounce tyrannous kings, and the idea of revolution
against misrule was by no means unpopular. In 1694 Tulley, in a
poem on the French king, wrote:

Let long-scorned slaves and subjects do their part,
With their own swords their own just rights assert.

Yet all through these early almanacs are strewn sentiments of
loyalty to the sovereign, especially after the “ Glorious Revolu-
tion ” of 1688. William and Mary were particular favorites, but
Anne, and the Georges, also, received their share of doggerel
praise. In 1687 Tulley printed the peculiar remark: “ Note — that
every King began his reign when the preceding King ended his.”
This sounds dangerously like a repudiation of the common-
wealth and all its enactments. The commonwealth parliament, it
should be remembered, was the first to claim power over “ the
possessions beyond the sea.” * The “ Glorious Revolution ” in the
American colonies was primarily a rebellion against the authority
of the English parliament rather than the prerogatives of the
crown. Recoliection of these facts makes the motive of Tulley’s
casual remark apparent.

It had always been the custom to affix to most almanacs chrono-
logical tables containing the important dates in the history of the
world listed very briefly. In America, it is interesting to note, even
trivial dates seemed worth adding to such lists if they appeared
important to the colonies. There was, in other words, a certain
local consciousness and an inclination to emphasize colonial his-
tory. About 1760 this tendency suddenly became more noticeable.
Hutchins (1758) and his successors through 1761 printed “an
Historical Account of American Affairs” —a brief but readable
record of the settling of the colonies, probably not too accurate
but indicative of a shift in emphasis.

This was soon followed by an interest in contemporary history
such as appears in Roger Sherman (1760) under the title: “ Good
News for New England, or an Account of the Capture of Quebec.”
This all seems the natural result of the burst of patriotism under

4 C. H. MclIlwain, The American Revolution (New York, 1923) , 21-22.

ee, ee

oe

|
|
:

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 273

William Pitt and his successful war against the French. But in
America it continued as a popular feature in many almanacs so
that in 1791-1797 Carleton found room to print selections from
the Memoirs of Captain John Smith. At the outbreak of the Revo-
lution a very natural development of this is apparent in most of
the almanacs. It is seen at its highest point, perhaps, in the Ameri-
can Calendar of 1767, printed in Philadelphia by “ Philo Coper-
nicus.” * It is a “ Recapitulation of Events Which Happened in
Consequence of the Late American Stamp Act.” It is elaborate
in detail and gives the dates of riots, burnings in effigy, and
resignations of collectors, as well as those of official action in
regard to the stamp act. The value of this sort of thing as
revolutionary propaganda is obvious. It was, moreover, popular,
for it spread rapidly during the next few years — for almanac-
makers seem to have been, on the whole, a revolutionary group.

Sherman’s almanacs were discontinued after 1760, but we have
statements of his which are interesting as coming from the rebel
patriot of the future.

1754: Liberty and yee os are dear to English men.
1755: The Health and Welfare of the People is the chiefest law.
1756: Good Laws well executed are the Bulwarks of Liberty and
Property.
Those who stir up sedition among the People are the worst
enemies of the State.
Intestine Jars are worse than foreign wars.
1760: A wise and gracious King, the best of Laws,
Judges and Statesmen, faithful to its Cause.

It is hard to believe that a man of such sentiments would under-
take revolution lightly. It becomes more and more apparent that
we are dealing, in the American Revolution, with things far
more fundamental than merely legal differences.

Nathaniel Ames, also, became a rebel. He has a paragraph on
the stamp tax in his preface to the almanac for 1766 and leaves
little doubt as to his sympathies —“ wishing all happiness to
British America and confusion to its foes.” Yet even here he
pauses to sound the warning that “ Liberty carried to excess be-
comes the worst kind of tyranny.”

5 Massachusetts Historical Society. ©

274 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Let us consider the Government must be kept up . . . and that
we have the happiness to be under as a king as ever reigned,
and a very wise government . . . and we cannot think of inde-
pendency.

When he came to make his almanac for 1767, the stamp act had
been repealed and he congratulates his countrymen accordingly
and then proceeds in what may seem a peculiarly American vein
of thought — appropriate to a land where Roger Sherman and
Benjamin Franklin had grown and prospered.

Having these matters so far settled according to our wishes let
us turn our thoughts to the acts of peace. . . . What fine oppor-
tunities have ye to improve yourselves by study above tradesmen
and mechanicks, whilst your fruits and herbage are growing? At
the intervals of cultivating your fields, ye might be enriching your
minds with useful knowledge. . . . Ignorance among the common
people is the very basis of tyranny and oppression. . . . Let us
then, my countrymen, study not only religion but politicks and
the nature of civil government; become politicians every one of
us ... and think for ourselves. . . . We are not tenants but
lords of the soil.

In general the tone of Benjamin West, of Providence, and of
Nathaniel Low, of Boston, is very much like that of Ames.
Benjamin West seems to be a little bit more direct and vigorous

in his propaganda as will be seen by this excerpt from the
almanac for 1766.

The people of Canada in all ill temper. . . . Trade burdened be-
yond all possible bearing; bleeding, dying. The whole of North
America in the depths of despair upon loss of privileges the most
dear and invaluable; such as a right to levy taxes by their own
Representatives . . . the colony assemblies have not at this time
the privileges which even French parliaments are indulged with
of laying their grievances before the Grand Monarque. . . . Were
I to glory in the name of “ Briton ” it would, if pronounced before
Frenchmen — only excite their ridicule and contempt.

And again, in 1767:

The Stamp Act . . . in its nature detestable, plotted and con-
tinued by a set of wicked, designing men . . . it would have sub-
verted the whole constitution of English America. . . . The eyes
of British manufacturers were opened to their dependence on
America.

Pee y YY’ ~~ —

arf

e

yn-
ib-
yes
on

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 275

Nathaniel Low was probably the most soft-spoken of all, and
likely to be more literary in his methods: he quotes Cato’s letters
in 1769; and in 1770 includes a little dialogue between Heraclitus
and Democritus on the disturbances of that time wherein
Democritus laughs at the comedy of the commotion and Heraclitus
mourns the tragedy of it. In 1771 appears a serious, straightfor-
ward exposition of the colonies’ case, urging the maintenance of
the boycott on English goods.

The cause we are engaged in is just, the Prize we are contending
for is inestimable. . . . Let the Plough, the Spinning Wheel, and
the Loom, with other such like utensils, be weapons to fight withal.

In this issue there is also recorded: “ A horrid infernal massacre
most inhumanly and barbarously committed by the British troops,
on the inhabitants of Boston — 5th day 1770.” The frontispiece
of 1775 is entitled “ The virtuous patriot at the hour of- death.”
This issue also urges Bostonians to support the plan of union
adopted by the congress. The almanac for 1776 contains an ad-
dress to the army at the front and an account of the skirmish at
Lexington. In 1777 there appears a persuasive rather than angry
letter addressed to the Tories.

There were other almanacs — Gleason’s, the Essex, “ Philo
Freeman,” and, perhaps most important, Edes and Gill for 1769
and 1770. These last were a Boston firm who printed the Ames
almanacs later on, but the author of these two issues is unknown.
That for 1769 went through two printings, a fact which makes it
even more interesting as proving its popularity. The almanac
begins with a satire on Governor Bernard. The author informs his
readers that, “ Having found by accident an old Pamphlet en-
titled The History of Publius Clodius Britano Americanus,” he
has decided to publish it as being of possible interest to his fellow-
citizens. The “old pamphlet” proves to be an account of the
British oppression of Americans. Of Publius, we are told that in
childhood “ his Genius appeared conspicuous in nothing but con-
triving new methods of torturing frogs and kittens . . . and like-
wise forging little lies concerning his school-fellows . . . he pre-
vailed to have their money and toys taken from them and given
to him for his honesty in complaining.” In the back of this almanac
is printed the charter of the Massachusetts Bay colony. The pam-

276 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

phlet is followed by an exhortation to Americans to stand by the
non-importation agreement. “ Those who have not Virtue enough
to deny themselves those superfluities which are ruinous to their
country, are unworthy to live in a land of Freedom.”

The almanac for 1770 (after a sarcastic account of the landing
of English troops in Boston, a preface to “ My Freeborn Country-
men,” and a continuation of Publius Claudius Britano Ameri-
canus) takes up the cudgels for non-importation by printing a
“ List of the Names of those who audaciously continue to counter-
act the united sentiments of the Body of Merchants . . . by
importing British goods contrary to that Agreement.” It is inter-
esting to note among these proscribed merchants the names of
Mein and Fleeming, who were importers of British books and
magazines. Apparently they found sufficient demand for this lit-
erature to warrant their continued importation in spite of the
colonial boycott on British goods. It is also noticeable that the
almanacs of Mein and Fleeming for this period are strictly non-
committal on political matters.

In the Edes and Gill almanac of 1770 we also find that at a
meeting of merchants and traders at Faneuil Hall, January 23,
1770, four offenders (for refusing to coéperate in a scheme for
storing goods under a committee until a general importation
might take place) were boycotted “ not only during the present
struggle for Liberty, but for ever hereafter.” There follows an
electioneering essay against neutrals and Tories and an urgent
appeal to women to support the embargo: “ saving your money
is saving your country.” In the back of this almanac is printed the
Liberty Song, and The Parody Parodized or Massachusetts’ Lib-
erty Song, followed by “A new Song — composed by a Son of
Liberty and Sung by Mr. Flagg at Concert Hall, Boston, February
13, 1770. The British Grenadier.” One stanza seems particularly
interesting as showing the growing national consciousness and
belief in the coming greatness of America:

Some future day shall crown us the Masters of the Main,
And giving laws and Freedom to subject France and Spain;

When all the isles o’er ocean spread shall tremble and obey,
Their lords, their lords, their lords, the lords of brave America.

Thus popular almanacs were one means of revolutionary propa-
ganda. Just as importantly, perhaps, they reflected opinion.

he
ir

ng
7
Ti-
. a
er-
by
er-

nd
lit-
the
the
on-

ta
23,
for
ion
ent

ent
ney

Lib-
1 of
lary
arly
and

rica.

opa-
ion.

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 277

Their printed pages and the interleaved diaries which we find
scattered through them are significant for reconstructing the life
that we must know well before we can begin to understand the
genuine forces of the revolution in America against government
from England. There is nothing startling in this: all the evidence
tends to confirm what has always been thought true of the time
and the people. Even a cursory acquaintance with their every-day
handbooks, however, gives one a sense of the actual humanity of
the men who are conveniently called Puritans and patriots.
Edmund Burke and Roger Sherman have shown the essential
fallacy of treating people as if they were numerals or abstractions.

THE LIBRARY OF AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
GENTLEMAN OF RHODE ISLAND

SUSAN STANTON BRAYTON

N the Spectator of April 12, 1711, Addison records a visit to

a lady named Leonora. While waiting for Leonora to come
down, he noted the titles of her books, which were attractively
arranged by folios and quartos on her book-shelves. Among them
he found: Ogleby’s Journal; Dryden’s Juvenal; Sir Isaac Newton's
Works; Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding; Sir
William Temple’s Essays; Seneca’s Morals; Taylor's Holy Living
and Dying. A rather dull list, it seems, on the whole, but it was
probably typical of the literary resources of the period. Such
books, it would seem, might have been found in the library of a
cultivated English lady’s home in 1711. It is interesting to see what
an educated gentleman on this side of the Atlantic might be sup-
posed to have read later on in the same century.

A collection of old books, a diary, a will, and a few letters in the
possession of the Marchant family show that Henry Marchant, of
Newport and South Kingstown, Rhode Island, graduate of the em-
bryo University of Pennsylvania, attorney-at-law, colonial agent,
and member of the continental congress, had, at his hand, reading
matter both varied and extensive in its scope. Most of the books of
this collection are thick folios, bound handsomely in calf, and

278 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

printed, almost without exception, in England. From the dates
on their title-pages, it is evident that they could have been pur-
chased by Mr. Marchant during his visit to the mother country
in 1771-1772. The object of this visit was to secure compensation
to the colony of Rhode Island for services rendered during the
French and Indian wars, but Mr. Marchant made it serve him
personally as well, by forming the acquaintance of interesting
people and going the usual round of sight-seeing. In his diary he
records regular attendance at church, possibly for the edification
of his pious wife, Rebecca, and carefully enters résumés of the
sermons. We wonder how he reconciled with the severity of his
wife’s principles, not to say his own puritanical upbringing, his
frequent visits to the theatre and his participation in levees and
balls. David Garrick was at the height of his popularity at this
time. Mr. Marchant saw him in several réles and even had the
privilege of taking breakfast with him. Thus it is not surprising to
find among his books a contemporary criticism of the art of Gar-
rick and other actors of the period.

Mr. Garrick is not handsome, nor did the most enthusiastic ad-
mirer of Mrs. Cibber ever call her a beauty, but both have fea-
tures large, strong and formed for marking the passions; each
has the eye piercing in the greatest degree. . . . It will seem
singular, but I think Mr. Garrick greater in comedy than in
tragedy. His Benedict I think equal to his Richard, though the
beauties of his playing are less striking in their nature. . . . The
kicking down of the chair by Mr. Garrick when the ghost of his
father in Hamlet enters in the closet scene was a piece of bye-
play introduced very happily in tragedy. Happy as this was he

the good sense not to repeat it constantly, for then it becomes
a stage trick and is contemptible. . . . No woman can speak Jane
Shore so well as Mrs. Pritchard, but a lady so much en = point
makes an odd figure dying of famine.

Like most travellers, Mr. Marchant supplied himself with a
book affording useful information about places and people likely
to furnish profitable entertainment. This is a thick little volume
entitled Rider's British Merlin | For the Year of our Lord God
1772 | Adorned with many delightful and | useful Verities fitting
all Capacities in | the Islands of Great Britain’s Monarchy. The
British Merlin, which was probably published annually, is an epit-
ome of the political, industrial, and social life of late eighteenth-

es

af & Ba om

int

ha
ely
ime
ing
The
pit-
nth-

—— — age

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 279

century England. The fairs, for instance, were listed in it. These
were held in various places on the first or the second of each month;
on some days there were as many as thirty-one going on simultane-
ously. Here it is also stated that his majesty’s levee days were every
Wednesday and Friday and, during the sitting of parliament, every
Monday; while the queen’s drawing room was on every Thursday,
and the Princess Amelia’s on the third Tuesday in the month.
The king’s household comprised the departments of pantry, but-
tery, wood-yard, confectionery, pastry, and silver-scullery. The
pan-keepers, the pewter-scourer, and the washers received {30 an-
nually; while Charles Eldridge, the keeper of ice-houses, was hand-
somely paid £100. How the gossips must have enjoyed the informa-
tion that the wet-nurse to the Prince of Wales, Mrs. Margaret
Scott, was paid {200 a year, and that Lady Mary Churchill, the
house-keeper at Windsor, received £320.

In London, Mr. Marchant formed the acquaintance of Cather-
ine Macaulay, who seems to have been in sympathy with his ideas
of government: he was a Whig, and she, also, set up for a lover of
liberty. Evidence of their friendship is to be found in their corre-
spondence and the presence among his books of Mrs. Macaulay's
The History of England from the Accession of James I to the Ele-
vation of the House of Hanover. In the introduction of eleven
pages, the author announces her intention “ To do justice te the
memory of our illustrious ancestors still having an eye to public
liberty.” The history consists of five folio volumes sumptuously
bound in calf. It was originally planned for six volumes; the fifth
carries the narrative only as far as the restoration of Charles II.
In a letter to Mrs. Macaulay, December 7, 1773, Mr. Marchant
wrote: “ My compliments to Mr. Dilby [the publisher]. If your
sixth volume is out I desire he would send it to me neatly bound
as the others by the first Rhode Island Ship. He shall be duly paid.”

One would not gladly read this monumental work, nor yet The
History of England, in two huge folio volumes of eight hundred
pages each, written in French by Rapin de Thayras and translated
into English by N. Tindal, M. A., vicar of Great Waltham in
Essex; nor even the works of the once-highly-thought-of Sir Wil-
liam Temple. Sir William was ready tc take all knowledge as his
province. His first volume deals with the relations of European
countries to England in 1671; the second contains letters relating

280 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

to “ the most important transactions that passed in Christendom
from 1665, to 1672.” The first folio is well thumbed; the second is
fresh and even new in appearance. Jonathan Swift saw these big
books through the press and, ambitious for advancement, wrote
the dedication to “ His Most Sacred Majesty William III.” They
brought him little profit and no preferment. Eighteenth-century
historians did not possess an easy style nor did they cater to the
general reader. All are solid, dignified, and Johnsonian. Only the
title-pages of many of these tomes are interesting.

The works of Algernon Sidney, once ambassador at the court
of Denmark, another eight-hundred-page folio, as well as A Trea-
tise of Military Discipline, by Humphrey Bland, Esq., and An
Essay on the History of Civil Society, by Adam Ferguson LL.D. one
pushes aside with relief for a sight of Johnson’s Dictionary, in two
volumes, fourth edition, and An Essay Concerning Human Under-
standing, by John Locke, Gentleman, twelfth edition. The Po-
etical Works of Alexander Pope, in four volumes, and Bell's edi-
tion of The Poets of Great Britain, complete from Chaucer to
Churchill, also help to clear the literary atmosphere.

Marchant was attorney-general for the colony of Rhode Island
from 1770 to 1777; so one would expect to find law books in his
library. Only two appear in this collection, however: The Prin-
ciples of the Laws of Scotland, by John Balfour, and Observations
on Reversionary Payments on Schemes for providing Annuities
for Widows and Orphans, by Richard Price. That he possessed
many such books is probable, for a letter to Mr. Alexander Grant,
merchant, London, reads thus:

NEWPORT, FEBRUARY 12TH, 1774.
Dear Sm:

. . - I would desire that the articles may be provided agreable
[sic} to Mrs. Marchant’s memorandum herin [sic] sent. Which
will more particularly fall to the care of Mrs. Grant. With what
remains be pleased to apply to Brotherton & Sewell at the Sign
of the Bible opposite the Royal Exchange for the books agreable
to the List. Many of them in course as they stand with the Shoes
and Wiggs may come to the money.

I have had many Books of Them and it may not be amiss to
let them know you want Them for me. When they have given you
an Amount of the Books you may (which is I found sometimes
necessary) remind Them that five percent is to be deducted
therefrom for prompt Pay. And be pleased to desire Them to

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 281

put up carefully with Them two of what They call Tilton Cheese
made in the Form of a Bag Pudding. Brotherton will remember
my admiring Them at his House. The Box he packs the Books
in may be made large enough to put the Box in which Mrs. Grant
may first pack Mrs. Marchant’s Things in for more Convenience
and Safety. You will excuse this Trouble I give you. Men disposed
to kind Offices must always expect Imposition. . . .
Your much obliged and very
affectionate Friend,
HENRY MARCHANT.

Sir William Temple Works 2 folio Volumes.

Sidney on Government with his Life and Apology

Sir Matthew Hale’s Pleas of the Crown; published with Notes by
Soloni, 2 Volumes.

Lord Talbot's Reports

Willson’s Reports

Banbury (Will) Replica of Copy in the Exchequer published by
George Willson

Plowden’s Reports .

Vattally, Law of Nations _I think the Title is in 2 or 3 Quarto
Volumes.

Burroughs Settlement Cases Adjudged from the Death of Lord
Raymond, 1732

The Complete Body of Husbandry: — A large folio Volume.

The best Treatice [sic] in 1 Octavo Volume upon Forestry

3 pairs neat strong Shoes for Summer for Mrs. Marchant:
George Davidson has the Measure and Last.

A handsome Wigg such as now be fashionable at St. James.
Mr. Marchant’s Barber was William Willson. I think he lived
in a little new round Court in the Strand not far to the Eastward
of Craven Street. Mrs. Stevenson where Dr. Franklin lodges how-
ever can direct Mrs. Grant’s servant. Willson has Mr. Marchant’s
measure.

2 handsome Rose Bags for Wigs.

p. s. The Articles will be wanted as early as may be procured
and sent to this Part of Newport.

To Mr. ALEXANDER GRANT
MERCHANT, LONDON
Per Captain Frost.

p.s. I omitted before to send a Lock of Hair of the Colour I

would have the Wig.*

1 Letter-Book of Henry Marchant, in the possession of his great-great
grand-daughter. The Dr. Franklin mentioned is Benjamin Franklin, whom
Mr. Marchant had met in England and with whom he had travelled in Scotland.

282 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

After the battle of Lexington, Mr. Marchant was in danger of
personal violence on account of his participation in revolutionary
activities — it was said that he had been threatened with hanging
at the yard-arm by the English if he were to be apprehended. Con-
sequently, he transferred his residence from Newport to a farm
which he had bought on the mainland, in South Kingstown. Here
he found opportunities to put into practice the instructions given
in A Compleat Body of Husbandry, as well as those contained in
The Art of Farriery, by Mr. John Reeves, Farrier at Ringwood,
Hants. A Treatise on Bees, with an appendix on the natural his-
tory of wasps and hornets, must also have been useful. This last
is profusely illustrated and its dedication reads:

To the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty.

Madam: The following sheets, which treat of Bees, are inscribed
to your Majesty with the greatest humility. They contain the in-
ternal constitution of nations infinite in their numbers, where
nature has settled the wisest regulations of policy and subordina-
tion, whose supreme magistrate is a Queen, who is in every respect
the mother of her people, and whose gratitude, homage, and affec-
tion to her is equally sincere and lasting.

At about the time of his removal to South Kingstown, Mr. Mar-
chant purchased for his son, William, a Short Introduction to
English Grammar, for the sum of two shillings, sixpence. This
little book of one hundred and thirty-two pages is unique in that
all the examples illustrating the rules are taken from the Bible or
from great English writers. On a single page, for example, under
the discussion of principal parts of irregular verbs are found quo-
tations from Pope’s translation of the Odyssey, Atterbury’s Ser-
mons, Addison, Prior, Dryden, Milton, and Shakespeare. Dean
Swift, too, is represented in these satirical lines:

The sun has rose and gone to bed
Just as if Partridge were not dead.

By the terms of Henry Marchant’s will, his English books were
to be divided equally among his wife and three children. The
agreement finally reached by these heirs, on September 3, 1796, was
that Mrs. Rebecca Marchant should have Dr. Hopkins’s System of
Divinity, West on the Resurrection, Quincy’s Sermons, Justifica-
tion of Dissenters, and Hale’s Tracts; the daughter, Sarah: Bailey's

of

n-

MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 283

Dictionary, Beattie on Truth, Pope’s Dunciad, Pope’s Iliad, Mod-
ern Geography, Addison’s Travels in Italy, Ferguson's Moral Phi-
losophy, and Stowe’s Gardens; the daughter, Elizabeth, and her
husband, Thomas Sessions: Belknap’s History of New Hampshire,
Tours through Britain, Beauties of the Stage, Religion of Nature,
Durham Abbey, Zsop’s Fables, Lyric Poems, Gibson’s Dispensa-
tory, Butler's Hudibras, Terence’s Plays, The Whole Duty of Man,
Present to Apprentice, Natural History of East and West Florida,
and Patten’s Sermon upon the Death of Dr. Stiles. The rest and
residue of the library was to be the property of the son, William
Marchant. As he received books greater in number and value than
those given to his mother and sister Sarah, he agreed to pay his
mother two pounds, eighteen shillings; and his sister, one pound,
seven shillings, sixpence. Literature, as we understand it, is not
largely represented in this old library. Possibly there were more
amusing books in the collection, books which were worn out with
being read — and finally thrown away.

At the close of the Revolution, Mr. Marchant had returned to
his Newport home, which had been ill used by the British guests,
and there he died. Judge William Marchant, his son, gave up the
house and made his permanent residence in South Kingstown.
There, in the beautiful colonial house which still stands a little
aloof at the end of a lane branching from the South County Trail,
William installed the furnishings of the Newport home, and
among these, the books which he had inherited from his father.
Together with the Latin texts which he himself had used at Yale,
they filled the book-cases of two old secretaries. Now they are as-
sembled in still another home, remote from the two in which
they were once cherished. Turning their pages curiously, a modern
reader may be reminded of the wise opinion Addison printed in
the Spectator:

Were all books reduced to their quintessence, many a bulky
author would make his appearance in a penny paper; there would
be scarce such a thing in nature as a Folio. The works of an age
would be contained on a few shelves, not to mention millions of
volumes that would be totally annihilated.

BOOK REVIEWS

Geography and Geology of the Region including Cape Cod, the
Elizabeth Islands, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, No Man’s
Land and Block Island. Memoirs of the Museum of Compara-
tive Zodlogy at Harvard College. Volume tu. By J. B. Wood-
worth and Edward Wigglesworth. (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Printed for the Museum. 1934. Pp. xvi, 322; 38 plates. $15.00.)

This book begins with a scholarly account of the general geol-
ogy of Cape Cod, the Elizabeth Islands, Nantucket, Martha’s Vine-
yard, No Man’s Land, and Block Island. There follow detailed
studies of each of these areas. The whole is a very thorough piece
of work, including erudite comment on the findings of earlier
geologists as well as the matured but never dogmatic opinions of
the authors themselves. This complete lack of dogmatism is, in-
deed, one of the striking characteristics of the volume —a good
indication of its genuine scholarship.

Such a book is necessarily so technical as to make hard reading
for the uninitiated; but to offset this difficulty, the authors have
prepared a remarkable set of geological maps of all parts of the
region, so colored and carrying such clear legends, that any one
can grasp at a glance the general story of the glaciers’ work. The
bay shore of the cape, for example, from Bourne to Orleans and
as far south as the wooded ridge that runs east and west along it,
is composed of material deposited during the Wisconsin stage of
glacial activity, by the Cape Cod Bay glacier, on top of older
Pleistocene foundations. All the territory south of this ridge con-
sists of sand and gravel washed out from under this glacier by
rivers of melting ice and spread out in a gentle slope to the waters
of Nantucket Sound.

The rest of the cape, from Orleans north to Truro, was formed,
on earlier Pleistocene foundations, by the action of this glacier
operating on the west, and outwash deposited by streams flowing
west from under the South Channel glacier that lay off what is
now the back side of this part of the cape.

The tip of the cape — Provincetown and the northerly fringe
of Truro — is not glacial at all, but is composed of sand washed off

284

BOOK REVIEWS. 285,

the back side of Wellfleet and Truro by the sea and carried north.
It was almost immediately bent west by the easterly gales, then
south by the north-easters, until it formed the hook that to-day
encloses Provincetown Harbor. Equally clear are the maps and
text that explain the geology of Nantucket and the Vineyard,
Block Island, and the Elizabeth Islands.

The process was, of course, not so simple as this, nor can the
story of it be so simply told. Each of the earlier stages of glacial
activity played its part in building the foundation for the deposits
of the Wisconsin stage of glaciation — the visible part of the cape’s
surface to-day — and each of these earlier periods is explained fully
and in a masterly fashion.

The many ponds that dot the cape were created by great blocks
of ice which, settling into depressions left by earlier ice invasions,
lay unmelted until after the rest of the glacier had vanished. When
they finally did melt, the surface water flowed into the cavities left
by them, and the ponds that we see to-day are the result. The pic-
turesque chain of hollows along the east coast of Truro and Well-
fleet — Dyer’s, Harding’s, Newcomb’s, and Cahoon’s hollows —
were formed in the same general way by the melting of isolated
glacial fragments.

There is a good account of Cyprian Southack’s crossing of the
cape by water in 1717 along what is now the Orleans-Eastham
town line, via Boat Meadow Creek, Jeremiah’s Gutter, Town
Cove, and Nauset Harbor, on his way to take possession of what
was left of the wrecked pirate ship Whidah on the Wellfleet beach.
The authors agree with Townshend that Southack was not the
only man to use this route, but that it was frequently followed by
small craft until it was blocked by the great storm and tidal wave
of October 20, 1770. They even suggest that Pamet River in Truro
may at one time have furnished a passage across the cape for small
boats, a conjecture in which, so far as this reviewer is aware, they
are alone.

The extent to which the cape was once wooded is indicated not
only by the statement that submerged stumps of large trees have
been reported off both sides of it, but also that Yarmouth, Brew-
ster, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, and Truro formerly yielded
peat in considerable quantities. We are told, in fact, that in all

286 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

probability, fresh swamps containing peat lie under all the salt
marshes on the cape.

The authors give careful information in regard to the post-
glacial changes in the shore line of the cape, the most extensive of
which have taken place along the outer beach from Provincetown
to Chatham. Just as Provincetown was composed of material dis-
lodged from this coast and swept north, so the long barrier beaches
of Nauset and Monomoy, that protect many miles of upland from
further incursions of the sea, were washed into place by the sweep
of the north-easters, aided always by the southerly set of the tide
along this stretch of coast. Webb’s Island, which is said to have lain
several miles off-shore south-east of Chatham, and to have been
demolished by the sea, the authors believe was actually adjacent
to Monomoy Beach and formed an integral part of it. In this opin-
ion they are in general accord with both Smith and Nickerson.
The authors estimate that at the time when the formation of Prov-
incetown was begun — perhaps twenty-one hundred years ago —
the outer beach lay two miles east of its present position. They
suggest that at the same rate, the cape between Orleans and Well-
fleet will have vanished in three thousand years.

The beaches thus formed by the sea have further affected the
appearance of the cape by furnishing the sand for its miles of
dunes — one of the most characteristic and picturesque features of
Cape Cod to-day. On-shore winds, carrying the loose beach-sand
before them, pile it up inland and continue to sport with it, twist-
ing it this way and that as season follows season until one never
knows from year to year what spot may be a sand hill and what a
hollow between two dunes.

A remarkable series of photographs of these beaches and dunes,
together with views of marsh and rolling moraine, conclude this
sumptuous volume. It is not for an amateur to comment on the
accuracy of its geological findings — the reputation of the authors
should be enough to vouch for that; but one will travel far before
finding a geological work in which maps and drawings so clearly
illustrate the statements of the text, or in which science and art
are so beautifully blended in illustrative photographs.

Henry C. KIrrrepce.

— wl
-

> 7T

oT rR aT

> 5

-

BOOK REVIEWS. 287

Samuel Gridley Howe. By His Daughter, Laura E. Richards. (New
York: D. Appleton-Century Company. 1935. Pp. xii, 283. $2.50.)

Samuel Gridley Howe was a New England Byron, his romanti-
cism controlled by a Puritan conscience and his enthusiasm tem-
pered by dignity. He combined with a touching faith in the per-
fectibility of mankind an infinite capacity for taking pains, and
his energy was exceeded only by his patience. He had a warm heart
but a cool head, and his passion for humanity was never dissipated
in abstractions but was directed toward immediate and practi-
cal ends. Scarcely out of college, he sailed to Greece to fight in the
war for independence. His were the triumphs, however, not of the
battlefield but of the work of social rehabilitation.

On his return to America he enlisted in a cause then as forlorn
as that of Greek independence — the education of the blind. He
invested this work with something of the dramatic urgency that
Dorothea Dix infused into the crusade on behalf of the feeble-
minded and Horace Mann into the reform of public education
and Garrison into the struggle against slavery. “ I do not like cau-
tion,” he wrote, “ it betokens little faith in God’s arrangement.”
He was, however, quite as unwilling to acquiesce in God’s arrange-
ments as were the other New England reformers, nor did he believe
that they also serve who only stand and wait. The miracle he
worked with Laura Bridgman excited the interest of the western
world, and not only the Perkins Institute but the work on behalf
of the blind everywhere is largely a monument to his genius. He
established the school for the feeble-minded; he contributed to the
reform of prisons and the penal code; he organized the board of
state charities of Massachusetts; he gave himself, recklessly, to the
abolitionist movement; he joined the Kansas crusade and co-
operated with John Brown. “ There was never on the soil of Massa-
chusetts,” wrote the politic Senator Hoar, “a more patriotic, a
more heroic, a more loving knight.”

Mrs. Richards’s biography of her father is a condensation of her
earlier two-volume edition of the Journals and Letters of Samuel
Gridley Howe. It is entirely uncritical, but has something of that
charm which often inheres in a work frankly filio-pietistic.

HENRY STEELE COMMAGER.

288 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

American Plays, Selected and Edited with Critical Introductions
and Bibliographies. By Allan Gates Halline. The American
Literature Series, Harry Hayden Clark, General Editor. (New
York: The American Book Company. 1935. Pp. viii, 787.)

Seventeen American plays are brought together in this an-
thology. The first, properly enough, is The Contrast by Royall
Tyler, which was produced in New York in 1787; the last, The
Field God by Paul Green, was produced in 1927. So a span of one
hundred and forty years, which just about covers our national
literature, is indicated by the plays in this volume. Among the
other plays are William Dunlap’s André; George Henry Boker’s
Francesca Da Rimini; Bronson Howard’s The Henrietta; The
New York Idea, by Langdon Mitchell; Madame Sand, by Philip
Moeller; Icebound, by Owen Davies; and Eugene O’Neill’s The
Great God Brown.

The plays were chosen for being representative of different
phases of our dramatic literature, and it was the editor's design to
show how this dramatic literature corresponds with our literature
as a whole. The Contrast and André, for example, are given as ex-
pressions in the drama of the intense national consciousness that
followed the War of Independence and inspired (if the word is
not too strong) the poetry of the Connecticut wits. Francesca
Da Rimini marks the romantic tendency that came to a climax
before the Civil War. The Henrietta shows what Professor Par-
rington called “ the beginning of critical realism.” The Great God
Brown and The Field God exemplify the temper of more recent
literature.

In his introductions to the plays Mr. Halline gives the most
up-to-date information about them and points out their different
literary affiliations. “ Philosophical interpretation and literary kin-
ship ” are what he stresses; “ commentary on the purely dramatic
aspects of the plays ” is subordinated. The supposition is, although
not a likely one, that the teacher will be able to supply purely
literary criticism.

Anthologies are conveniences, and this one has its good points.
One is glad to have some of the plays reprinted here at hand, and
the bibliographies at the back of the book are indeed excellent.
The introductory notices, however, leave much to be desired. Mr.
Halline seems to have no independent and consistent opinion

eo 6 eee —— >

TCreyzwy:= we ww YF

ree

“<

— oe ee

BOOK REVIEWS | 289

about drama. He follows the lead of others — in just what direction
he does not seem to be always aware. In a single paragraph, for
instance, he unhesitatingly chimes in with Bronson Howard's dis-
crepant remarks, “drama should be divorced from literature”
and “ the next great revival of literature in the English language
will be in the theater.” He swallows with only a little irritation
to his throat the popular estimate of Mr. O'Neill, although he
must be conscious of intelligent dissenting opinion. Thus he con-
cludes: “ Almost without exception O'Neill deals with significant
and compelling themes; his characterization is sharp and faithful;
his expression is graphic and rhythmic; and his dramaturgy is
sound, trenchant, and original.”

Mr. Halline’s facts are usually to the point, but his critical com-
ments want reflection and discrimination. To take another in-
stance of his critical indigestion:

Francesca Da Rimini belongs to romantic literature because of its
emphasis on feeling . . . because of its recovery of the past (me-
dieval Italy) ; because of its representation of the mysterious (the
sword leaping from its scabbard to the oaken floor) ; and because
of its colorful, striking language. . . . Prominent among the
writers of romantic verse were Bryant, Taylor (a close friend of
Boker’s) , Whittier, Lowell (lover of Italy and Dante), Long-
fellow (devoted to the New England past and translator of

Dante); in the field of the romantic novel were Hawthorne,
Simms, and Melville.

Or yet again: “ It is at soulless commercial aggrandizement that
Howard aims his well turned shafts of satire; for, though he writes
to entertain, he also invests his plays with that criticism of life
which Arnold believes is essential to literature.”

Mr. Halline’s critical comments are neither enlightening nor
inviting. The student is not likely to go on of his own accord to
read The Contrast after he has faced such a sentence as this one
with which Mr. Halline loads his introduction, . . . “ one thus
tends to regard The Contrast as a nationalistic document rather
than a completely disinterested evaluation of Anglo-American
cultural relationships.” Comments of this kind simply afford an-
other opportunity for reflecting on the painful fact of how far
eager scholarship in America has outrun critical penetration and
the nice and pointed use of English.

W. E. SepGwick.

290 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

Americans in England. By R. B. Mowat. (Boston and New York:

Houghton Mifflin Company. 1935. Pp. x, 284. $3.00.)

Mr. Mowat, to judge by his book, must be a mild and pleasant-
mannered Englishman who has spent several “ delightful and
fruitful months and years” in America. The result is a friendly
essay on a subject which might have provoked a monumental
analysis of international relations.

The subject is one of alarming proportions which nothing but
taste and facile ease of a good conversationalist could have con-
densed into one small volume. Starting with the returning colo-
nists of the earliest period, Mr. Mowat sketches the story of Ameri-
can visitors to England down to the days of college presidents like
Wilson and Eliot. Inevitably a few stand out: Franklin, Irving,
Emerson, Hawthorne, Henry Adams, Henry James, Whistler;
others are selected, for no apparent reason, from throngs equally
interesting. Gouverneur Morris, John Trumbull, Charles A.
Bristed, George H. Putnam; and hundreds of others, who might
have found place in a more inclusive study, are ignored or dis-
missed with a mention. The result is that no generalizations of
any moment are possible, whether on the character and attitude
of the visiting American or the hospitable Englishman, or on the
states of civilization in either of the countries concerned and their
interaction.

But, unpretentious as it is, the book is reasonably sound as far
as it goes; and it is certain not to stir any personal or national
animosities. It is not difficult to paint Irving as cordial in his atti-
tude and fortunate in his reception; but a study of Cooper which
leaves an impression of friendliness is a somewhat more taxing
task. In Mr. Mowat’s hands, Hawthorne enjoys even Liverpool,
Emerson can extract some comfort from the clubs of St. James's
Street and Pall Mall, and English society is congenial enough to
overcome the discomforts of national hostility for Henry Adams.
These comments are true, but they are not the whole truth. There
was greater unevenness in Anglo-American relations and in the
tempers of the visiting Americans and their hosts than one would
conjecture from these genial pages.

Yet it would be easy to err in the other direction and see only
hostility or sentimentality in the reactions of these American visi-
tors and their distant cousins. Mr. Mowat is right in finding be-

oe

ti-

ng
ol,

$$

re

ild

BOOK REVIEWS. 291

neath the comments of them all a homing instinct based on recol-
lections of a common social heritage. He is tactful in avoiding the
jealousies and other less pleasant aspects of close kinship which
are also there for the seeking. In the brotherhood of the two
peoples lies the safest, most pleasant, and perhaps the deepest
point of contact between them.

Rosert E. Sprcier.

America’s Tragedy. By James Truslow Adams. (New York and
London: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1934. Pp. 415. $3.00.)

In the growth of America, writes Mr. Adams in the preface to
America’s Tragedy, “ two influences have been of prime impor-
tance, — that of the frontier and that of sectionalism” (v) . In the
frontier, Mr. Adams saw America’s epic; in sectionalism, which
culminated in the Civil War, he sees America’s tragedy. The book
is a notable and, this side of paradox, a scholarly and popular
history.

The author finds the cause of the war in the incompatibility of
the divergent civilizations of North and South. The two sides
were equally sincere, equally inconsistent, and equally responsi-
ble; and the real determinants which made the conflict inevitable
were climate and topography, economics, the industrial revolu-
tion, and “a changed world outlook on democracy and slavery ”
(144) . Thus America’s tragedy was a tragedy of fate: from the be-
ginning, “step by step Fate had led us on” (54), and, by 1861,
“ Fate had led us to the field of blood” (144) . Borrowing the lan-
guage of tragedy, he calls the two most “ disunionist” states,
Massachusetts and South Carolina, the “ antagonists” of the
drama; he pins upon the abolitionists of the former and the fire-
eaters of the latter the responsibility, in so far as it was human,
“not merely for the war, but for the steadily mounting and ever
more disastrous misunderstanding and hatred between the sec-
tions” (103) . His well-known brief against the Bay Colony Puri-
tans is repeated, with the implication that the abolitionists were
spiritually and psychologically in direct descent from their seven-
teenth-century Calvinist forebears (117) . The implication is open
to challenge.

The value of this latest of Mr. Adams’s treatments of American

292 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

history is not that the author presents facts or interpretations new
to scholarship, but that he synthesizes a large amount, though ap-
parently not all, of the important scholarly material, enlivens and
enriches it with extracts from diaries, letters, and newspapers, and
rolls it forth, on the current of his very readable style, for a wide
audience. Since the author is, by deliberate plan, highly selective,
it is perhaps irrelevant to say that many pertinent facts and theo-
ries have been omitted. To select two examples at random: Mr.
Adams does not deal with the relations between Douglas and
President Buchanan, nor does he describe the South’s extra-
political attempts to arrest her decline in the forties and fifties.

Proportion in America’s Tragedy refutes Mr. Adams's statement
in the preface that this is not “ another ‘ Civil War book’” (v),
but chiefly a study of sectionalism: his allocation of space is, for
1607-1820, 55 pages; for 1820-1861, 138 pages; for 1861-1865, 183
pages; and for 1865-1935, 29 pages. As a study of sectionalism, this
is obviously incomplete. Not only has Mr. Adams narrowed the
subject sharply by limiting sectionalism to the cleavage between
North and South (the West is considered solely in its relation to
the Civil War) , but he has also truncated his study of the diver-
gence of North and South by dropping the story at Appomattox.
The reconstruction period, heavy with long consequences, he
treats in eleven pages. His four pages on the healing of the breach
can not even suggest the important problems of the contemporary
sectionalism of the South.

In style, America’s Tragedy is admirable for its combination of
dignity with vigor, movement, and picturesqueness, and for its
clarity. Though writing for a popular audience, Mr. Adams avoids
the sensational, except occasionally in such a phrase as “ the often
lying screeches of the Abolitionists” (94). Yet Mr. Adams’s pen
is not always a sure one; at times it is betrayed, perhaps by haste
of composition, into rhetorical clumsiness, and occasionally into
slips of grammar, such as: “ Had Lee . . . not have been able”
(258) , and sometimes into blindness to both grammar and rheto-
ric: “ Although both were deeply attached to family life, . . .
neither cared for society and were bored by many of the lighter
sides of life” (329) .

But America’s Tragedy is, by and large, excellent reading —
clear, impartial, moving. In content, like most of Mr. Adams's
work, it is summary and suggestive rather than investigative.

ELIZABETH Foster.

pe 2 ee ed

=< Fo

BB aa em

te
to

”

BOOK REVIEWS | 293

The Letters of Gamaliel Bradford, 1918-1931. Edited by Van
Wyck Brooks. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Com-
pany. 1934. Pp. vii, 377. $4.50.)

In a brief, but interesting preface, Mr. Brooks states that
Gamaliel Bradford preserved carbon copies of the letters he wrote
from 1918 to 1931, which he had bound in fifty-four letter-books.
From this abundance of material, the editor has selected about
two hundred and fifty letters, most of them complete, which he
presents with a minimum of annotation, but with a good index.
The persons addressed are not identified; many of them are so
well known as to need no identification, at least in this generation,
and this editorial policy is justified by the fact that it focuses the
reader's attention on the letters themselves.

It would be unfair to call the letters “ bookish,” for that word
often implies narrowness in outlook and pedantry in style; whereas
these letters reveal broad sympathy and a style informal, candid,
and often witty. It would be equally unfair to state that they deal
with nothing but books. In one of them, Mr. Bradford describes
himself accurately as having “ vast curiosity and an exceeding
love for the mass of humanity ”: the letters show his interest in
topics ranging from the youthfulness of democracy to the atti-
tudes of Barberry, his kitten. Nevertheless, his world, as shown by
this volume, was less the world of men than the world of books.
Few pages lack literary discussion of some sort, and the letters will
appeal chiefly to those who like books and good talk about books.

In this world of books, Mr. Bradford was thoroughly at home
and therefore an excellent guide. From the books on which he
loved to dwell and to which he often referred it would be pos-
sible to make up a reading list of unusual interest, which could be
annotated by the illuminating comment scattered through the
letters. He longed for fame as poet; he achieved it as biographer;
the letters suggest that he might also have won it as critic. Two
paragraphs — to give but one instance—in a letter to M. R.
Werner, dated December first, 1928, sum up brilliantly what has
since been said for and against Strachey’s Elizabeth and Essex.
Mr. Bradford was equally discriminating in his criticism of his
favorite writers, such as Saint-Beuve, and of his own productions
—a gift not always granted to authors.

294 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

To say that he was at his best in writing about books is not to
deny the charm of his letters to old friends, in which persons and
places were the principal topics. To his own persistent ill-health
he alluded seldom, and generally in a light vein. The letters do
not read like those of a sick man. His correspondents, so the editor
tells us, numbered five thousand; they included, as the letters in-
dicate, people of widely varying interests. One who reads the let-
ters will readily understand the reason for that extraordinary
number.

Epwarp S. Noyes.

Tudor Geography, 1485-1583. By E. G. R. Taylor. (London:
Methuen and Company. 1930. Pp. 2go. 155.)

Late Tudor and Early Stuart Geography, 1583-1650. A Sequel to
Tudor Geography, 1485-1583. By E. G. R. Taylor. (London:
Methuen and Company. 1934. Pp. 322. 155.)

The Explorers of North America, 1492-1806. By John Bartlet
Brebner. (New York: The Macmillan Company. 1933. Pp. xv,

502. $3.50.)

E. G. R. Taylor is the accomplished professor of geography in
the University of London. Her two books deserve to be carefully
studied by students of Anglo-American history in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. There is more than a little new ma-
terial in them relating to the early voyages to the American coast.
They are particularly valuable because of the immense amount
of light they shed on the plans and ideas that were being matured
by English thinkers who were trying to reckon, in an imperial
way, with the fact of the American continent. Dr. Taylor restores
to his rightful place in the history of English geographical thought
the almost forgotten figure of Master John Dee. He is shown in
her first volume as the specialist whom Sir Humphrey Gilbert
consulted when he was forming his design to settle on the coast
of Norumbega. The author builds up a rich background of
ideas, family connections, and mercantile interest during the

~~ a = 6S

e FT #2 838 EE HF *

=

BOOK REVIEWS. 295

Tudor period — in so far as these relate to the general problem of
Anglo-American expansion.

Dr. Taylor’s researches on Dee will be of particular interest to
students of early New England history. Her findings with regard
to Richard Hakluyt of the Middle Temple, and Richard Hakluyt
the preacher, also possess interest of the most emphatic sort for
students of this period. At long last the balance is being redressed.
It is becoming more and more apparent that to study exploration
and settlement without a clear and precise notion of the plans
and ambitions cherished by the projectors of colonies and plan-
tations before ever they launched their expeditions is to invite
serious distortion. These two books go a great way toward correct-
ing the tendency that has all too long dominated the historical
scholarship dealing with our early colonial history.

Both Dr. Taylor’s volumes are equipped with splendid bibli-
ographies of contemporary geographical texts, manuscripts, and
maps. The materials are arranged chronologically, so that the
lists can be consulted quickly and conveniently. The bibliog-
raphy printed with the first volume is also a finding list: it tells
where the materials, many of which are little known, can be
found. This excellent practice the author did not continue in her
second volume, and the omission is genuinely unfortunate. It is
the reviewer's hope that in the following volume, in which Dr.
Taylor plans to carry on her narrative from 1650 to 1714, the
original practice of making the lists useful in both respects will
be again employed.

Dr. Taylor is now at work preparing for the Hakluyt Society
a new edition of Hakluyt’s Discourse of Western Planting (1584) .
The task is far advanced, and we may look forward to the com-
pleted study within eighteen months, or less. The author’s intro-
duction will contain much novel information concerning the
English plans for the development of the Atlantic coast before
the incorporation of the Virginia companies.

Professor Brebner has written a most entertaining volume in
which is combined great knowledge, charm of style, and striking
clarity of underlying concept. He has elaborated what one might
call a theory of the “ inner logic” of American expansion. It is
beautiful to see how he uses this theory as a guide through the
maze of facts relating to nearly every corner of the American con-
tinent. If he does not write much about New England, it is per-

296 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

haps because the New England historians do not seem as yet to
have done the spade-work concerning the réle of that section in
the broader history of American expansion. For example, one
looks at Dr. Brebner’s index for Bartholomew Gosnold. Gosnold,
however, is not mentioned. Yet he has every right to be included,
for the Gosnold-Gilbert voyage of 1602 to the coast of North Vir-
ginia (as New England was then called) is of more than casual
interest in the history of exploration of the Atlantic coast, and it
is of distinct importance in Anglo-American expansion, as forming
the first link in the unbroken chain of events, voyages, and plans
that led through Pring’s and Weymouth’s expeditions to the
charter of 1606 and the founding of James Town in 1607. Dr.
Brebner’s omission of the Gosnold-Gilbert expedition is most
probably to be explained by reason of the fact that there is no
modern study of this voyage. This omission and others, too, sug-
gest that it is about time for some scholar to take up the theme of
the early New England frontier, and write a systematic book on
the subject, a book of the quality of Professor Verner Crane’s
The Southern Frontier.

Dr. Brebner calls attention to a little-known fact when he points
out that an Englishman arrived at Quebec in the summer of 1640,
having come overland from the settlements on the Maine coast,
by way of the upper Kennebec valley. This Englishman was look-
ing for the “ Sea of the North.” This episode raises many ques-
tions. The reviewer suggests a few. What connection, if any, does
this explorer have with that shadowy New England attempt to
reach Hudson Bay in 1640? What connection, if any, does he have
with the attempt of the New Hampshire adventurers to reach
Lake Champlain just before this time? Is there the possibility that
this Englishman was Captain Thomas Young, who tried to ascend
the Delaware River (aiming to reach the Great Lakes and thus
to tap the fur trade of the West from the central Atlantic coast,
so as to cut off the French higher up) a few years before?

Dr. Brebner has already written an excellent monograph on
Acadia, and this latest book of his shows him to have an enviable
grasp of the problem of expansion seen as a whole. Perhaps he can
be prevailed upon to undertake a history of the New England
frontier in the seventeenth century. The reviewer permits him-
self the pious hope that he will do so. If this imagined book should
resemble the one here treated, it will certainly be something to
look forward to with high anticipation.

FuLMER Moon.

BOOK REVIEWS | 297

Canada and the American Revolution. By George M. Wrong.
(New York and Toronto: The Macmillan Company. 1935. Pp.
xii, 497. $5.00.)

An interpretation of the American Revolution from the pen
of a Canadian scholar is long overdue. It comes with special per-
tinence at a time when a comprehensive survey of Canadian-
American relations is under way. In 1774, the only settled portions
of Canada were the lower St. Lawrence valley and Nova Scotia.
Quebec was almost entirely composed of French inhabitants, a
discreet and perplexing entity in a perplexing empire. Nova
Scotia, on the other hand, was truly “ New England’s Outpost.”
Yankee settlers and sailors had poured into the colony, and com-
munication with Boston and Newport was steady and congenial.
Why, then, did Nova Scotia, alone among the English-speaking
colonies, block the attempt to make the rebellion one of continen-
tal proportions? Why, too, did French-speaking Canada fail to
unite with its mother country, in 1778, to expel the British con-
queror? Was the Quebec act intended as a check on unrest among
the French? These are the problems which one would expect a
Canadian to examine, but the author of this book has not at-
tempted to solve them.

Mr. Wrong has given us an admirably fair and a thoroughly
delightful volume. Frankness forces one to acknowledge that little
of the content is original. The conventional accounts are em-
ployed to good advantage, but there is a distressing indifference to
recent scholarship. Such excellent studies as Burt’s Old Province
of Quebec and Professor Kerr’s article, “ The Stamp Act in Nova
Scotia” (NEw ENGLAND QuARTERLY, September, 1933) , are over-
looked or used inadequately. One is struck, too, with the unhappy
proportions of the book. Fully two hundred pages are devoted to
the period before 1765, and the discursive accounts of the Pontiac
rebellion and of English country life in the Georgian period come
out in contrast to the thin account of the reception of revolution-
ary ideas in Nova Scotia and Canada. The settlement of the loyal-
ist refugees in these colonies after 1783 is more extensively treated,
but here again there is a frank dependence on the conventional
interpretations.

Mr. Wrong’s genius for distilling the voluminous contemporary
chronicles into an engaging and swiftly-moving story commends

298 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

itself to the earnest attention of young scholars who turn out pre-
cise but quite unreadable doctoral dissertations. One suspects,
however, that the cause of austere scholarship has been sacrificed
to the desire to achieve the charm of a Parkman or a Prescott. It
is unfortunate that a scholar of Mr. Wrong’s maturity and talents
should not have given us more bread with our jam.

Tuomas H. Le Duc.

Essays of William Graham Sumner. Edited by A. G. Keller and
Maurice R. Davie. Volume 1. General and Sociological Essays.
Volume u. Economic and Political Essays. (New Haven: Yale
University Press. 1934. Pp. 499. $3.00; Pp. 534. $3.00.) The
volumes are sold separately.

These volumes give practically all the important essays by the
distinguished Yale sociologist, except What Social Classes Owe to
Each Other. Beginning with illuminating prefaces by the editors
and concluding with a careful and complete bibliography of Sum-
ner’s publications, they permit us to obtain a comprehensive view
of his character, as well as of his standpoint with regard to the
basic problems of sociology, economics, and politics. As to Sum-
ner’s character, we see before us a strong and independent person-
ality, not afraid to say what he thinks, regardless of the popularity
or unpopularity of his statements. As to his mentality, it is a pe-
culiar combination — a preacher who scolds at preaching; a pro-
found idealist who scorns ideals as “ phantasms”; a “ scientific
realist ” who now displays a remarkable grasp of social realities,
now goes astray from them and creates his own “ phantasms ” as
wild or as “ flat” as they can be.

Similarly, Sumner’s theories and points of view show contrast-
ing variety. One can quote many lines from his Essays that impress
the reader as a kind of realized prophecy, brilliant and fresh as
though written to-day. And there are other pages that are drab,
superficial, and fallacious. Perhaps one of the sources of this drab-
ness is the zeal of a former theologian proselyted to the religion of
“ scientism ” as it existed at the end of the nineteenth century. At
that time this partly positivistic, partly sensualistic “ scientism ”
was believed to be the last and only word of science. R. Avenarius
and E. Mach, H. Poincaré and Duhem, K. Pearson and Pareto,
these and many others, the neo-Kantians, the neo-positivists, and

2“ ?

It

BOOK REVIEWS. 299

the empiricists of all kinds were all professing it in a somewhat
similar way. No wonder that Sumner also was infected by it, as is
shown especially in his essay, The Scientific Attitude of Mind.

At the present time many of us see the limitations and even the
fallacies of this “ scientism.” Its “ facts” often appear to us mean-
ingless; its “evidences” irrelevant and conditional; its validity
questionable. In the case of Sumner, therefore, his endless cita-
tions of “ facts” concerning primitive peoples seem to us to prove
little or nothing as to the validity of his claims; his other “ facts ”
and assumptions (for instance, his conception of the middle ages
as the age of unbounded ignorance) look more than doubtful.

Where he is dominated by this religion of “ scientism ” Sumner
is dull and flat. Where he throws away such dogmas and grapples
with reality directly, as his common sense and thought dictate, he
is at his best. Then, indeed, he puts into a few lines something
sparkling, original, and profound. To read these pages is to en-
joy them, intellectually and zsthetically. For their sake the Essays
deserve to be read and re-read, studied, and understood.

Prtmam =A. SOROKIN.

Fourscore: An Autobiography. By Robert Grant. (Boston and
New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1934. Pp. 413. $3.50.)

Writing an autobiography is a popular pastime nowadays —
almost as popular as calling the author of one vain —as if they
who publish novels or books of lyrics or learning were not. Al-
though the tradition is old enough now to be quite respectable,
St. Augustine and Rousseau, we are supposed to understand,
wrote with definite purpose: the first hoped to persuade the world
and the second to explain himself. The author of Fourscore, how-
ever, is frank in acknowledging that he set down his memories of
a “long and happy life” chiefly at the request of his wife, who
believed that the record would interest their children and grand-
children. Judge Grant has lived at the centre of life and letters in
Boston during three generations — “ in the modern Athens where
[he] knew all the passwords.” Under the shadow of the Civil War,
for instance, he learned the valuable art of knowing how to read
newspapers; for almost thirty years he sat as a judge of probate

300 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

for Boston, having enjoyed the unusual honor of being the choice
of so great a governor as Russell. Born among the Brahmins of
Beacon Hill and familiar with all the interlocking families of the
Back Bay during the golden age of the eighties, Judge Grant had
the wit to cultivate, as well, the friendship of those outsiders who
had ornamented the arts and letters of New England — Howells
of Ohio, and Rhodes, and Isabella Stewart Gardner. Among
writers and politicians and men of affairs he has walked with good
nature, but not unwarily, and always with a sharp sense of the
absurd.

Although his father insisted that he attend the city schools of
Boston, the victim of this experiment in democratic discipline
rewarded himself by spending ten years at Harvard — and lived
to hear one of his own sons remind him of the fact. To the bach-
elor’s degree of 1873 he added a doctorate and then went through
the law school, industrious in a leisurely way that would be looked
at with suspicion in strenuous days when young green apples are
solemnly certified as ripe, each June. Dividing his interest between
law and letters, Robert Grant was sometimes sniffed at as a
“literary judge,” and even the New York Sun preserved in print
the saucy couplet:

I’m Mr. Grant of Beacon Hill;
I never worked and never will

— this by way of ironical comment on the newspaper squabble as
to whether or not a novelist should be a judge. Boston has never
been all starch and Sparta, whatever the pretenses of the time
when the great Oliver Wendell Holmes was a familiar figure in
Beacon Street. The author of Fourscore recalls the clans and cur-
rents of old days with amiable pleasure, summers at Nahant, and
excursions to Europe. The joy of life must have been keen in a
community where four young men could write one novel for a
newspaper, and collect royalty on the book rights, as well.
Although Judge Grant was not too old before he became “ con-
vinced that he could write verses, but not poems,” it was the
temptation of literary success which saved him from devoting his
life to the law. That a young man not yet thirty should earn
twenty-five thousand dollars on his first novel, having had the
courage to pay for the printing himself, is a surprising, but suffi-

BOOK REVIEWS go1

cient, explanation. For thirty years thereafter, the author surveyed
the scene of Boston and New York with satire that was all the more
effective for never being savage. The explosion of the Civil War
had put money into strange hands, and the social consequences of
good fortune were sometimes alarming for people who grew up in
days when men could still sneeze without being diagnosed or spied
on. The difference between the work of Robert Grant and Edith
Wharton, on one hand, and that of Sinclair Lewis, on the other,
offers interesting evidence of the change in men and manners
which has taken place in the fifty years of this author’s adult life.
Main Street carries ridicule across the Alleghanies, but it is signifi-
cant that for the author of The Chippendales the greatest novel
ever written is still Vanity Fair. It was a second great war, accord-
ing to Judge Grant, which brought to an end for him that sense
of social security from which, alone, satire can flourish.
Appointment to the bench and the tragic death of Goyernor
Russell, who might well have become president of the United
States, cut Robert Grant off from his acquaintance with politics.
He had served one year as secretary to Dr. Samuel Abbott Green, at
the time when a city physician and a librarian of the Massachusetts
Historical Society had got himself elected mayor of Boston as a
reform candidate. One year of this rather academic expedient, it
developed, was quite enough for both the doctor and the voters.
Then, in 1884, Grant joined the men who bolted Blaine and
watched Lodge and Roosevelt eat their own words. The author’s
comment (189) on the great futures which were supposed to
await the distinguished Mugwumps of Massachusetts is amusing.

I was one of these bolters, and almost took for granted that the
leading Mugwumps who forsook the Republican fold at the dic-
tate of conscience were secure of high office in the years to come.
Yet the result was exactly opposite. A few were elected to Congress
and won prestige; but in the long run they all lost political stature
through lack of party standing. Party allegiance, on the other
hand, had placed Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt in
the seats ff the mighty.

It was the irony of fate that put Roosevelt in Judge Grant’s home
at the moment when he announced his determination to perform
the one great act of political courage in his whole career. Staying
as his house guest in February, 1912, the ex-president openly be-

302 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

came a candidate for the Republican nomination of that year. He
had, as he said, “ made” Taft, having been cunning enough to
leave behind him, for his unhappy successor, the question of the
revision of the tariff which he himself had never dared to touch.
But this he did not say. It was arch of the ex-president to choose
the home of one of the hated Mugwumps as the site of his new
departure in politics. When word of it got out, the Grant house
was subjected to a state of siege (318-322) .

It was well for Judge Grant that thirty years on the bench and
almost a quarter of a century as an overseer of Harvard taught
him to keep his temper and even to possess his soul in patience.
Suddenly, in 1927, he was pushed into the midst of what can only
be described as a social cyclone. His concise account of his part in
the famous case of Sacco and Vanzetti can not be ignored (366-
374) - One hesitates to recommend a reading of it, for passions still
smolder dangerously on this subject. To one person with no first-
hand knowledge of the record,’ and no special interest other than
noting the feelings of those affected, the pride of opinion:
prompted by this case was a spectacle. The situation was compli-
cated, if not confused: even Republicans were by no means unani-
mous as to the character and qualifications of the man who had
made them make him governor, and the vanity of Judge Thayer
was both garrulous and vindictive. Quite against his own will,
Judge Grant found himself one of a commission of three charged
with the thankless task of passing on the legal propriety of a
sensational trial for murder. Modesty, perhaps, forbade him to
call attention to the obvious fact that of the three men chosen
he, alone, by nature and experience, was qualified to deal with
public opinion. Mr. Stratton had always shunned the public eye,
and Mr. Lowell, whether through want of tact or by intention,
had always seemed to try to blacken it.

Only an optimist could have supposed that any report from any
one would ever be accepted by every one. By the time the commis-
sion sat, emotions had already become unmanageable. For once,
the New English zeal for crusading had to work itself out at
home. It was not now a business of bullying British bureaucrats,
or abusing the slave-holders of the South. New England turned

1 Transcript of the Record of the Trial of . . . Saccoand . . . Vanzetti
and Subsequent Proceedings (New York, 1928-1929) , 6 volumes: 6,094 pages.

BOOK REVIEWS 303

her eyes inward and was not happy. As the fray spread, an army
of eager women gave it the character of a battle with the Ama-
zons. The two Italians (who had only their lives at stake) were
overlooked. No one was too ignorant to form an opinion on the
subject or take it for an airing. Whatever may be thought of
the upshot, it ought to be remembered that it would have been
easier for the commissioners to lean forward, in the fashion of the
time, and recommend a commutation to the governor. They saw
fit to do otherwise, even though conservative opinion is likely to
nurse its grievances in silence. The eight pages of Fourscore in
which Judge Grant gives his side of the story deserve very careful
reading. An autograph letter from Chief-Justice Taft congratu-
lating Judge Grant on his conduct (once the case was closed) is
a significant addition to the record.

It fell to Robert Grant to reprimand Judge Thayer for his
“ grossly indiscreet ” conduct “ off the bench.” This unfortunate
man had pictured himself in the réle of a Marius, turning back
the barbarians from the cities and farms of Italy. Commenting on
the “ noisy invective ” with which a “ disappointed minority ” re-
ceived the report of the commission, Judge Grant asks his readers:
“Is it conceivable that we should not have recommended the
Governor to pardon [Sacco and Vanzetti] or reduce their sentence
had we felt any doubt as to their guilt?” Too many people will
answer this question not with their brains, but their hearts.

The author of Fourscore has lived the whole evening of his life
in a kind of world into which he was not born. If manners maketh
man, he has seen men made over in the last twenty years. This is
easier, perhaps, even for old age than for youth, with its eye on the
future. Not the least charm of this casual, informal autobiography
is the absence of fretful complaint. The author smiles good-
naturedly at the eccentric consequences of the cult of self-expres-
sion. At eighty, the pursuit of happiness seems a snare and a de-
lusion to a man who has been lucky enough to walk with it all
his life. He has touched the world at many points and travelled
far, and now, neither bumptious nor bitter, looks out at autumn
through the radiant sunlight of October.

STEWART MITCHELL.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Susan S. BRAYTON, a resident of Providence, Rhode Island, is a
graduate of Boston University.

Francis A. Curisriz, now professor emeritus of Church History,
Meadville Theological School, resides in Lowell, where he was
born and reared.

Henry Streeter ComMacer is professor of History in New York
University.

Cement Eaton is a member of the department of History at
Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania.

EvizasetuH Foster teaches History at Meredith College, Raleigh,
North Carolina.

Dr. Geravp S. GRAHAM is instructor and tutor in the department
of History at Harvard.

Henry C. Kirrrepce is a member of the faculty of St. Paul’s
School, Concord, New Hampshire.

Tuomas H. Le Duc, a graduate of Columbia, now holds a fellow-
ship in History at Yale.

Dr. Bert JAMEs LOEWENBERG is a student of religious thought in
the United States during the nineteenth century. The past year
he has spent in England.

NAPOLEON WILLIAM Love Ly is the minister of the Unitarian
church in Franklin, New Hampshire.

DonaLp MAcCAMPBELL is a native of Philadelphia. Since taking
his master’s degree at Harvard in 1932, he has resided in Boston.

FutmMer Moon is making a study of Anglo-American promotion
literature in the seventeenth century. He is now in London.

Roy F. NicHo .s, professor of History in the University of Pennsyl-
vania, is the author of the biography of Franklin Pierce.

Epwarp S. Noyes is associate dean of freshmen at Yale.

Dr. WiLi1AM ELLery SepGwick is instructor and tutor in English
at Harvard.

Rosert E. Spiiver, one of the editors of American Literature, isa
member of the department of English at Swarthmore College.

Prrmm A. SoroKIN is professor of Sociology at Harvard.

Viota C. Wurre is curator of the Abernethy Library of American
Literature at Middlebury College, Vermont.

394